It Takes a Village: Multidisciplinarity and Collaboration for the Development of Embodied Conversational Agents

TL;DR

This paper advocates for multidisciplinary collaboration in developing embodied conversational agents, emphasizing community-building among experts to overcome the challenges of complex, costly, and interdisciplinary ECA development.

Contribution

It proposes a collaborative community model with defined roles and communication channels to enhance innovation in ECA research.

Findings

Community-based collaboration can accelerate ECA development.

Clear roles improve interdisciplinary communication.

Collaborative efforts expand research boundaries.

Abstract

Embodied conversational agent (ECA) development is a time-consuming and costly process that calls for knowledge in a plethora of different and not necessarily adjacent disciplines. Engaging in activities outside of one's core research to acquire peripheral skills can impede innovation and potentially restrict the outcomes within the boundaries of those acquired skills. A proposal to tackle this challenge is creating collaborative communities of experts from the contributing disciplines to the field of ECAs that via clearly defined roles, expectations and communication channels can help extend the field of ECA research.