Abstract
In this study, we are interested in exploring whether people would talk with 3D animated virtual humans using a smartphone for a longer amount of time as a sign of feeling rapport [5], compared to non-animated or audio-only characters in everyday life. Based on previous studies [2, 7, 10], users prefer animated characters in emotionally engaged interactions when the characters were displayed on mobile devices, yet in a lab setting. We aimed to reach a broad range of users outside of the lab in natural settings to investigate the potential of our virtual human on smartphones to facilitate casual, yet emotionally engaging conversation. We also found that the literature has not reached a consensus regarding the ideal gaze patterns for a virtual human, one thing researchers agree on is that inappropriate gaze could negatively impact conversations at times, even worse than receiving no visual feedback at all [1, 4]. Everyday life may bring the experience of awkwardness or uncomfortable sentiments in reaction to continuous mutual gaze. On the other hand, gaze aversion could also make a speaker think their partner is not listening. Our work further aims to address this question of what constitutes appropriate eye gaze in emotionally engaged interactions.
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Kang, SH., Feng, A.W., Leuski, A., Casas, D., Shapiro, A. (2015). Smart Mobile Virtual Humans: “Chat with Me!”. In: Brinkman, WP., Broekens, J., Heylen, D. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9238. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21996-7_51
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21996-7_51
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