Conversational informatics for situated communication

Messages need to be situated for communication to make real sense in our life. Conversation allows us to exchange situated messages in simultaneous streams of social interactions at multiple levels. Conversation provides an effective means for circulating knowledge in a community. Conversational Informatics comprises a theoretical foundation of our endeavors of understanding and augmentation of conversations. It consists of four research areas: conversational artifacts, conversational contents, conversational environment design, and conversation measurement, analysis and modeling. As for conversational artifacts, we aim at building embodied conversational agents and conversational robots that can participate in conversational interactions among people. As for conversational contents, we develop technologies that will allow us to capture knowledge arising in a conversational situation and reuse it to enhance later conversations. As for conversational environment design, we design smart environments that can sense conversational behaviors to either help participants become involved in a collaboration, or record conversation for later use. As for conversation measurement, analysis and modeling, we take a data-driven quantitative approach to understanding conversational behaviors. I will overview recent results in conversational informatics and discuss new challenges.