Future of QA in the Business Environment

1
Future of QA in the Business Environment

• Yael Ravin
• ravin_at_us.ibm.com
• T. J. Watson Research Center, IBM

2
Current status

• QA markets itself
• Natural interface
• Succinct
• Easy to assess success
• But this can backfire
• difference b/w QA and full NLP understanding
  (ellipsis, dialog context)
• continuum from single facts to judgements

3
Market for QA Search

• For employees in the company
• increase productivity
• "What is the meal limit for Toulouse?"
• training
• "When should I open the emergency door?"
• support innovation
• "What new sedan features were introduced in the
  last 6 months?"

4
Market for QA Search (continued)

• For consumers
• online shopping
• "Do you sell mice with no cords?"
• online support
• "How do I attach a printer to my ThinkPad 570?"
• Between companies
• match making
• "Who does PR for small theater productions?"

5
Integrate QA within other products

• Work within different business domains and user
  needs
• shopping, expertise locator, business
  intelligence, ...
• Integrate with other functionalities
• a generic search engine
• a dialog system
• Operate with multiple sources of info
• databases, text, presentations, business rules

6
Issues for QA in business

• Develop case scenarios with partners
• Prototype QA for applications and learn what is
  useful
• Develop measures
• performance - simultaneous users
• what is good enough for customers to use
• cost of customization
• one time and on-going
• linguists vs.domain experts