Examining the Effectiveness of Chatbots in Gathering Family History
  Information in Comparison to the Standard In-Person Interview-Based Approach
Kieron Drumm Vincent Tran
One of the most common things that a genealogist is tasked with is the
gathering of a person's initial family history, normally via in-person
interviews or with the use of a platform such as ancestry.com, as this can
provide a strong foundation upon which a genealogist may build. However, the
ability to conduct these interviews can often be hindered by both geographical
constraints and the technical proficiency of the interviewee, as the
interviewee in these types of interviews is most often an elderly person with a
lower than average level of technical proficiency. With this in mind, this
study presents what we believe, based on prior research, to be the first
chatbot geared entirely towards the gathering of family histories, and explores
the viability of utilising such a chatbot by comparing the performance and
usability of such a method with the aforementioned alternatives. With a
chatbot-based approach, we show that, though the average time taken to conduct
an interview may be longer than if the user had used ancestry.com or
participated in an in-person interview, the number of mistakes made and the
level of confusion from the user regarding the UI and process required is lower
than the other two methods. Note that the final metric regarding the user's
confusion is not applicable for the in-person interview sessions due to its
lack of a UI. With refinement, we believe this use of a chatbot could be a
valuable tool for genealogists, especially when dealing with interviewees who
are based in other countries where it is not possible to conduct an in-person
interview.