A Generalized Web Component for Domain-Independent Smart Assistants
This work addresses the challenge of building domain-independent smart assistants for web-based information systems, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing web component technologies.
The authors tackled the problem of integrating natural language question answering systems into web platforms across domains by developing an open-source web component called Instant Expert, which includes user input, question processing, and UI modules, and demonstrated its features through two use cases.
This article introduces an open-source web component, Instant Expert, which allows robust and efficient integration of a natural language question answering system to web-based platforms in any domain. Web Components are a set of web technologies to allow the creation of reusable, customizable, and encapsulated HTML elements. The Instant Expert web component consists of the user input (i.e. text, voice, multi-selection), question processing, and user interface modules. Two use cases are developed to demonstrate the component's features, benefits, and usage. The goal of this project is to pave the way for next-generation information systems by mitigating the challenges of developing voice-enabled and domain-informed smart assistants for communicating knowledge in any domain.