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The UX of Avatar Customization

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Avatar customization is a feature that is offered in many computer and video games. Customization options are presented to users via Character Creation Interfaces or CCIs. CCIs differ greatly between games, independent of genre, with regard to the quantity and quality of customization options available. In addition, the way in which these options are presented to users differs from game to game. Research on avatar customization is typically focused on user-avatar identity or self-representation. In general, we have found that the User Experience (UX) of avatar customization has been greatly overlooked in academic literature. As such, we look to existing research on UX in order to propose how its methodologies may be used to study the impact of CCI affordances on player experience in games.

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  • (2024)“More Than Just Playing a Character”: Gender Exploration and Expression in Avatar CustomizationGames and Culture10.1177/15554120241307982Online publication date: 26-Dec-2024
  • (2024)An Exploratory Study on Gender Dysphoria & Character CustomisationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3650020(1-12)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
  • (2024)Nature of Users’ Persuasion and Exploration in Interactive Storytelling Video Games in the Netflix Games LibraryInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2430920(1-10)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2017
7138 pages
ISBN:9781450346559
DOI:10.1145/3025453
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: 02 May 2017

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  1. affordances
  2. avatars
  3. identity
  4. interface
  5. user experience

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CHI '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 600 of 2,400 submissions, 25%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)“More Than Just Playing a Character”: Gender Exploration and Expression in Avatar CustomizationGames and Culture10.1177/15554120241307982Online publication date: 26-Dec-2024
  • (2024)An Exploratory Study on Gender Dysphoria & Character CustomisationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3650020(1-12)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
  • (2024)Nature of Users’ Persuasion and Exploration in Interactive Storytelling Video Games in the Netflix Games LibraryInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2430920(1-10)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2024
  • (2023)Individualized Virtual Reality for Increasing Self-Compassion: Evaluation StudyJMIR Mental Health10.2196/4761710(e47617)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
  • (2023)The category is #gaymer: A multi-method approach for understanding the queer player experienceConvergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies10.1177/1354856523117891329:5(1308-1329)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2023
  • (2022)Audio Matters Too: How Audial Avatar Customization Enhances Visual Avatar CustomizationProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501848(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2022)Can avatar homophily influence flow and exploratory behaviour of online users?Education and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-022-11111-727:9(12363-12379)Online publication date: 28-May-2022
  • (2022)Relaxing in virtual reality: one synthetic agent relaxes allVirtual Reality10.1007/s10055-022-00650-627:1(439-449)Online publication date: 4-May-2022
  • (2021)School's BackProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34341764:CSCW3(1-25)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2021
  • (2020)Your Own Worst Enemy: Implications of the Customization, and Destruction, of Non-Player CharactersProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3410404.3414269(93-106)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2020
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