While diversity has become a debated issue in design, very little research exists on positive use-cases for diversity beyond scholarly criticism. The current work addresses this gap through the case of a diversity-aware chatbot, exploring what benefits a diversity-aware chatbot could bring to people and how do people interpret diversity when being presented with it. In this paper, we motivate a Q&A chatbot as a technology probe and deploy it in two student communities within a study. During the study, we collected contextual data on people's expectations and perceptions when presented with diversity during the study. Our key findings show that people seek out others with shared niche interests, or their search is driven by exploration and inspiration when presented with diversity. Although interacting with chatbots is limited, participants found the engagement novel and interesting to motivate future research.

翻译：尽管多样性已成为设计领域备受争议的话题，但除了学术批评之外，鲜有研究关注多样性的积极应用场景。本研究通过一个具有多样性意识的聊天机器人案例，探讨此类技术能为用户带来哪些益处，以及人们在面对多样性时如何解读这一概念。本文以问答式聊天机器人为技术探针，在两个学生社区中开展实证研究。研究过程中，我们收集了用户在接触多样性时表现出的期望与认知的情境数据。关键发现表明：当呈现多样性时，用户倾向于寻找具有共同小众兴趣的群体，或出于探索与灵感驱动的动机进行搜索。尽管与聊天机器人的交互存在局限性，但受试者认为这种互动方式新颖有趣，足以推动后续研究。