Wizard of Oz experiments for companions

Wizard of Oz experiments allow designers and developers tosee the reactions of people as they interact with to-bedevelopedtechnologies. At the Centre for Interaction Design atEdinburgh Napier University we are developing a Wizard of Ozsystem to inform and further the design and development ofCompanion based technologies. Companions are intelligent,persistent, personalised, multimodal, natural languageinterfaces to the Internet and resources such as photo or musiccollections. They have the potential of turning our currenthuman-machine interactions into human-machine relationships.In particular, a Companion prototype for reminiscing about aphoto collection, called PhotoPal, is being used in ourexperiments. Several Wizard of Oz experiments have been runto assess people’s reactions and thoughts about using aCompanion interface. The feedback from these experiments hasinformed both the design direction and choice of developmenttechnologies going forward. The Wizard of Oz system has alsobeen put to use in a classroom of young pupils and to aid adultsmake more productive use of the Internet for learning. Furtherexperiments to investigate the appropriateness of Companiondialogue are planned.