Method and system for interactive object-oriented dialogue management

An interactive computer system including a dialogue manager and application control logic, the system for processing a dialogue between a user and an application, wherein the dialogue consists of a plurality of sub-dialogues, the system comprising:

• means for providing a plurality of objects, each object encapsulating dialogue data and dialogue procedures associated with a dialogue-state, each of the dialogue-states being a model of one of the plurality of sub-dialogues;
• means for determining an inheritance hierarchy of the dialogue-states corresponding to dialogue situations between the user and the application;
• means for providing a pointer to identify a first object as a current object corresponding to an initiator of the dialogue between the user and the application;
• means for receiving an input signal from the user;
• means for processing the input signal based on the dialogue-state corresponding to the current object;
• and
• means for updating the pointer to identify a second object as the current object, the step of updating being based on the step of processing.