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Here's a talk my colleague and I gave at O'Reilly Strata about natural language UIs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnV2JnNBM1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

by bravura 10y ago

Here's a talk my colleague and I gave at O'Reilly Strata about natural language UIs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnV2JnNBM1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnV2JnNBM1I We focus on NLUIs for the purposes of data querying. In many cases, natural language is concise and allows you to elide implied constraints. For example, "Opportunities where I'm on the account team" The SQL would be: SELECT * FROM OPPORTUNITY WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM account_team_member atm JOIN opportunity ON opportunity.account_id = atm.account_id WHERE atm.user = me) There's a correlated subquery in there. Even if you are a SQL expert, your time to query formulation is far higher if you use SQL than English. Drag and drop UIs are just a thin veneer over SQL, so a drag and drop UI requires understanding the underlying data model and join structure. My argument here is that there are some key places where NLUIs really shine, especially when they are scrupulously combined with more traditional UIs.

nitwit005 10y ago
My previous team studied allowing similar queries, and we didn't see anything so easy to interpret into a query. In testing, users typed in a lot of strings that couldn't be interpreted (by machine or human), or which were ambiguous. It may be that people have gotten used to Google/Bing accepting crap queries and still showing a decent rezult. But, I suspect the main problem is they couldn't explain what they wanted to a human, at least not without considerable conversation.
syllogism 10y ago
This is indeed very nice :). I did my thesis on CCG, so this is all very dear to my heart. The paper I'm most proud of is CCG work too.[1] I have some unpublished follow-ups on light verb constructions I'd love to get released one day. Btw, upshotdata.com returns 403 --- probably this isn't news to you, but just in case. [1] http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P10-1022 http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P10-1022
stcredzero 10y ago
Your example has some contextual information contained in the overall structure of the sentence. There's also information in the text which wouldn't be contained in a vocal query. Your example might be answered by a query with the following link: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/tm-opportunity/opportunity-sol4408.html http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/tm-opportunity/opportunity-... Followed by the system registering that you are "on the account team." I do agree that NLUIs can shine where there are constrained/specific interaction contexts.

by bravura 10y ago

nitwit005 10y ago

My previous team studied allowing similar queries, and we didn't see anything so easy to interpret into a query. In testing, users typed in a lot of strings that couldn't be interpreted (by machine or human), or which were ambiguous. It may be that people have gotten used to Google/Bing accepting crap queries and still showing a decent rezult. But, I suspect the main problem is they couldn't explain what they wanted to a human, at least not without considerable conversation.

syllogism 10y ago

This is indeed very nice :). I did my thesis on CCG, so this is all very dear to my heart. The paper I'm most proud of is CCG work too.[1] I have some unpublished follow-ups on light verb constructions I'd love to get released one day. Btw, upshotdata.com returns 403 --- probably this isn't news to you, but just in case. [1] http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P10-1022 http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P10-1022

stcredzero 10y ago

Your example has some contextual information contained in the overall structure of the sentence. There's also information in the text which wouldn't be contained in a vocal query. Your example might be answered by a query with the following link: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/tm-opportunity/opportunity-sol4408.html http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/tm-opportunity/opportunity-... Followed by the system registering that you are "on the account team." I do agree that NLUIs can shine where there are constrained/specific interaction contexts.