Here's what i can do: Chatbots' strategies to convey their features to users

Abstract

Chatbots have been around since the 1960's, but recently they have risen in popularity especially due to new compatibility with social networks and messenger applications. Chatbots are different from traditional user interfaces, for they unveil themselves to the user one sentence at a time. Because of that, users may struggle to interact with them and to understand what they can do. Hence, it is important to support designers in deciding how to convey chatbots' features to users, as this might determine whether the user continues to chat or not. As a first step in this direction, in this paper our goal is to analyze the communicative strategies that have been used by popular chatbots to convey their features to users. To perform this analysis we use the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM). As a result we identify and discuss the different strategies used by the analyzed chatbots to present their features to users. We also discuss the challenges and limitations of using SIM on such interfaces.