Blog 03: Assessing Affective Interaction Agents With Privacy

We are in week 3 now and in this week we learn more about the interactive agents in the field of affective HCI. We know that people tend to interpret and respond to verbal and nonverbal cues to determine the behavioral characteristics of another person. But have you ever wondered how we interpret towards interactive characters in computer interfaces? Interactive characters have been used by computer interfaces for a long time now. Remember Clippy from the Microsoft office? It’s one of the first characters I came across as a child when I started using the computer. Since then, interactive characters have evolved and are seen across a number of domains. Interactive characters have been used in many ways to improve interaction, user experience, user engagement, personal assistant and what not! 

Studies have shown that the motivation behind introducing interactive characters is a great way to take advantage of natural human social affordances by the means of interactive communication.  It has been a tested and proved theory of human-like presence that results in appealing and engaging interactions. Talking about the challenges in creating an effective interaction with the help of a character. There are many aspects which inspire the creation of interactive characters. The characteristic may vary depending upon the mode of presentation but one thing which stays vital across all formats for successful characters is it’s personality. Thomas and Johnstone(1981) discuss how an animated character's personality consists of the characteristic attitudes and actions that people learn to associate with that character, as revealed during the story, through the character's motions and conversations, and interaction with other characters. In other words, it is crucial to include cues which humans use to understand different personalities. To understand a personality people consistently rely on the verbal style and non-verbal cues. This is further inclusive of choice of words, fluidity of speech, person's posture and body movement.

Perfecting the personality is not the only thing which results in the development of interactive agents. Individual differences also play an important role in this. Just like we discussed in previous weeks. Emotion and affect is something that differs from person to person and also from time to time. Isbister and Nass (2000) carried out a study to understand similarities and differences between human-human social interaction and human-computer interaction. The results showed that humans evaluated interactive character in a similar way they did for humans. The results also indicated that humans pay close attention to the postures of interactive characters along with their words to interpret them.

While this being said, it is not always the case that humans will always find the interaction matches their expectations. Sometimes this interaction may also lead to frustration. Frustration could be a result of the inefficiency of tasks performed by computer. (Klein, Moon, Picard, 2002) discussed as a method to provide emotional support to frustrated users with an interactive software agent. It was amazing to learn how use of natural language construction for interaction can provide effective support to users. My learning this week also includes how computers are capable of alleviating negative emotions even when they are a source of negative emotions. A good interaction can be implemented by constantly keeping in mind users' emotional state throughout the interaction. Elements like buttons can be utilized more for interactive features in a system. This week summarizes how a design inspired by considerations of human emotions can result in increased user experience and how affect plays an important role in human computer interaction.

References:

[1] Isbister & Nass – Consistency of personality in interactive characters: verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and user characteristics 

[2] Klein, Moon, Picard – This computer responds to user frustration: theory, design, and results 

[3] THOMAS, F. & JOHNSTON, O. (1981). ¹he Illusion of ¸ife: Disney Animation. New York: Hyperion.