Prototyping Dialogues with Midiki: An Information State Update Dialogue Manager

The context of the work presented in this paper is related to the design of systems and interfaces which enable natural language interaction between a person and a machine, through the use of Dialogue Managers (DM). Any practical DM must incorporate a model of a dialogue for the domain or task being addressed. Unfortunately, there are few methodologies and tools that allow authors to carry out an intuitive and easy modelling of such dialogues. This paper presents the proposal and application of a methodology and a tool for the authoring of generic dialogues for the MIDIKI DM, illustrated by the development of a concrete model of a dialogue.