"Is anybody there?": exploring the use and difficulties of Brazilians with conversational systems

Abstract

Conversational Systems (CSs) are increasingly being used and receiving investments. However, these systems can present problems that discourage users from using them. This paper aims to verify the opinions of Brazilian users and ex-users of CSs about the use of these systems and their possible difficulties. We conducted an online survey with several questions about the use of CSs and obtained 113 respondents from different knowledge areas, such as law, agronomy, health, computing, among others. Results reveal some issues in the Brazilian context that negatively influence the use of CSs, such as accent, lack of support for the Portuguese language, and internet access problems. Despite this, results show that respondents consider CSs easy to use and satisfactory. We hope our results can contribute to improving these systems for the Brazilian context, providing insights for the exploration of new strategies for designers and developers.