Quiz5678 Flashcards
refers to
producing an emotional response.
Affective behavior can also cause an
emotional response in others. So, for
example, when someone smiles it can
cause others to feel good and smile
back. Emotional skills, especially the
ability to express and recognize
emotions, are central to human
communication.
Affective Aspects
A well-known approach to designing affective interfaces is to use expressive icons and other
graphical elements to convey emotional states. These are typically used to indicate the current state
of a computer. For example, a hallmark of the Apple computer is the icon of a smiling Mac that
appears on the screen when the machine is first started. Other ways of conveying the status
of a system are through the use of:
Expressive Interfaces
A general assumption is that
novices will feel more at ease with
this kind of “companion” and will be
encouraged to try things out, after
listening, watching, following, and
interacting with them. The agents
were presented as friendly
characters, including a friendly dog
and a cute bunny
Friendly interfaces
Reasons why emotional responses occur
when an application doesn’t work properly or crashes
when a system doesn’t do what the user wants it to do
when a user’s expectations are not met
when a system does not provide sufficient information to let the user know what to do
when error messages pop up that are vague, obtuse, or condemning
when the appearance of an interface is too noisy, garish, gimmicky, or patronizing
when a system requires users to carry out many steps to perform a task, only to discover a
mistake was made somewhere along the line and they need to start all over again
Examples of user frustration provokers
Gimmicks
Error messages
Overburdening the users
Appearance
Different kinds of virtual character: agents
Synthetic, Animated and emotional agents
These are similar to synthetic
characters except they tend to be
designed to play a collaborating role
at the interface. Typically, they
appear at the side of the screen as
tutors, wizards and helpers intended
to help users perform a task. This
might be designing a presentation,
writing an essay or learning about a
topic. Most of the characters are
designed to be cartoon-like rather
than resemble human beings.
Animated Characters
These are designed with a predefined
personality and set of emotions that
are manipulated by users. The aim is
to allow people to change the moods
or emotions of agents and see what
effect it has on their behavior.
Various mood changers are provided
at the interface in the form of sliders
and icons
Emotional Agents
General Design Concerns
Believability of virtual characters
Appearance
Behavior
Mood of Interaction
One of the major concerns when designing agents and virtual characters is how to
make them believable. By believability is meant “the extent to which users
interacting with an agent come to believe that it has its own beliefs, desires and
personality” (Lester and Stone, 1997, p 17). In other words, a virtual character that
a person can believe in is taken as one that allows users to suspend their disbelief
Believability of virtual characters
Parsimony and
simplicity are key. Research findings suggest that people tend to prefer simple
cartoon-based screen characters to detailed images that try to resemble the human
form as much as possible (Scaife and Rogers, 2001). Other research has also found
that simple cartoon-like figures are preferable to real people pretending to be
artificial agents.
Appearance
how good are
they at pointing out relevant objects on the screen to the user, so that the user
knows what they are referring to? One way of achieving this is for the virtual
character to “lead” with its eyes.
Behavior
The way the character communicates with the user is also important. One approach
has been towards emulating human conversations as much as possible to make the
character’s way of talking more convincing. However, a drawback of this kind of
masquerading is that people can get annoyed easily and feel cheated
Mode of interaction
