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How interface agents affect interaction between humans and computers

Published: 22 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

For many years, the HCI community has harbored a vision of interacting with intelligent, embodied computer agents. However, the reality of this vision remains elusive. From an interaction design perspective, little is known about how to specifically design an embodied agent to support the task it will perform and the social interactions that will result. This paper presents design research that explores the relationship between the visual features of embodied agents and the tasks they perform, and the social attributions that result. Our results show a clear link between agent task and agent form and reveals that people often prefer agents who conform to gender stereotypes associated with tasks. Based on the results of this work, we provide a set of emerging design considerations to help guide interaction designers in creating the visual form of embodied agents.

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      DPPI '07: Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Designing pleasurable products and interfaces
      August 2007
      532 pages
      ISBN:9781595939425
      DOI:10.1145/1314161
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 22 August 2007

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      • (2024)Customizability in Conversational Agents and Their Impact on Health Engagement (Stage 2)Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies10.1155/2024/50159132024:1Online publication date: Nov-2024
      • (2024)Effects of Gender Synchrony in User-Agent Interactions: Integrating the Designer as a Product Cue in Virtual Human Design for Mental Health SupportProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3687272.3688326(123-131)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2024
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