Go to ACL ARR 2024 December homepageCONCEPT – An Evaluation Protocol on Conversational Recommender Systems with System-centric and User-centric Factors
The conversational recommendation system (CRS) has been criticized regarding its user experience in real-world scenarios, despite recent significant progress achieved in academia. Existing evaluation protocols for CRS may prioritize system-centric factors such as effectiveness and fluency in conversation while neglecting user-centric aspects. Thus, we propose a new and inclusive evaluation protocol, CONCEPT, which integrates both system- and user-centric factors. We conceptualise three key characteristics in representing such factors and further divide them into six primary abilities. To implement CONCEPT, we adopt a LLM-based user simulator and evaluator with scoring rubrics that are tailored for each primary ability. Our protocol, CONCEPT, serves a dual purpose. First, it provides an overview of the pros and cons in current CRS models. Second, it pinpoints the problem of low usability in the "omnipotent" ChatGPT and offers a comprehensive reference guide for evaluating CRS, thereby setting the foundation for CRS improvement. Our code and dataset will be openly released.