# Exploring Links between Conversational Agent Design Challenges and Interdisciplinary Collaboration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08832 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08832/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 5 of its 97 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [How do Data Science Workers Collaborate? Roles, Workflows, and Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06684/) (2020)
- [Designing Creative AI Partners with COFI: A Framework for Modeling Interaction in Human-AI Co-Creative Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07666/) (2022)
- [Investigating How Practitioners Use Human-AI Guidelines: A Case Study on the People + AI Guidebook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12243/) (2023)
- [A Conversational Interface to Improve Medication Adherence: Towards AI Support in Patient's Treatment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09844/) (2018)
- [A "Distance Matters" Paradox: Facilitating Intra-Team Collaboration Can Harm Inter-Team Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02484/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent years have seen a steady rise in the popularity and use of Conversational Agents (CA) for different applications, well before the more immediate impact of large language models. This rise has been accompanied by an extensive exploration and documentation of the challenges of designing and creating conversational agents. Focusing on a recent scoping review of the socio-technical challenges of CA creation, this opinion paper calls for an examination of the extent to which interdisciplinary collaboration (IDC) challenges might contribute towards socio-technical CA design challenges. The paper proposes a taxonomy of CA design challenges using IDC as a lens, and proposes practical strategies to overcome them which complement existing design principles. The paper invites future work to empirically verify suggested conceptual links and apply the proposed strategies within the space of CA design to evaluate their effectiveness.