NooSpeak

NooSpeak aims to enhance Web search with human-like interaction, in order to provide users with a more natural and entertaining experience. It merges an existing widely used service (Google Search) with artificial intelligence technology (a pattern knowledge-base written in AIML and its parser) to create a chatting interface to the search engine.
The project starts from the assumption that search is highly computer-centred, forcing people to formulate their questions in an unnatural form, and produces a poor and frustrating experience. The goal of the project is therefore to build an interaction system that facilitates users by adopting their natural language, yet preserves the efficiency of the search engine in finding information on the Web. The first prototype of such a system uses a chatterbot to pre-process human inputs, passing the chatterbot responses to the search engine, from which results it extracts one to be delivered to the user. Search results are then presented inside an interface that borrows from instant messaging software conventions, so that user has a constant overview of her chatting/searching history. The chatterbot role is a diagnostic one, helping users to clarify and refine their search, possibly correcting spelling mistakes.
In order to ease user’s task, the prototype offers real-time suggestions based on popular searches relevant to what user is typing.
It also displays two weighted lists (chat clouds) of semantically related words and synonyms, one gathering data from all users inputs and the other built upon the corpus of Google responses. Chat clouds’ function is to enrich user’s vocabulary, aiding her to find new solutions and build relationships between topics.
A further stage of the project aims to allow users to customize the service: by creating an account, they would be able to actively teach the chatterbot about their preferences, and to see the system improving its performances by analysing their individual data.

Online application, it is under development: some functionalities may not be working as described. The current prototype has been tested effectively only on Mozilla Firefox, so please use such browser to view/explore it.

Italian, graduated in Communication Design from the Politecnico di Milano in 2005, Matteo is currently attending his second year MA Communication Design (Digital Media specialisation) at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He is also working as a Flash developer at Milo Creative Ltd, a new media company specialized in educational games. NooSpeak is his Master Thesis Project.