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‘More like a person than reading text in a machine’: Characterizing User Choice of Embodied Agents vs. Conventional GUIs on Smartphones

Published: 08 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) provide an interface modality on smartphones that may be particularly effective for tasks with significant social, affective, reflective, and narrative aspects, such as health education and behavior change counseling. However, the conversational medium is significantly slower than conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for brief, time-sensitive tasks. We conducted a randomized experiment to determine user preferences in performing two kinds of health-related tasks—one affective and narrative in nature and one transactional—and gave participants a choice of a conventional GUI or a functionally equivalent ECA on a smartphone to complete the task. We found significant main effects of task type and user preference on user choice of modality, with participants choosing the conventional GUI more often for transactional and time-sensitive tasks.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Engaging and Entertaining Adolescents in Health Education Using LLM-Generated Fantasy Narrative Games and Virtual AgentsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650983(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Use and acceptance of voice assistants among people with aphasia in GermanyFrontiers in Communication10.3389/fcomm.2023.11764758Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
  • (2022)Community Dynamics in Technospiritual Interventions: Lessons Learned from a Church-based mHealth PilotProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517700(1-23)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2021
2965 pages
ISBN:9781450380959
DOI:10.1145/3411763
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 the author(s) 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: 08 May 2021

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Author Tags

  1. experiment
  2. interface modality
  3. mobile computing
  4. virtual agent

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Engaging and Entertaining Adolescents in Health Education Using LLM-Generated Fantasy Narrative Games and Virtual AgentsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650983(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Use and acceptance of voice assistants among people with aphasia in GermanyFrontiers in Communication10.3389/fcomm.2023.11764758Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
  • (2022)Community Dynamics in Technospiritual Interventions: Lessons Learned from a Church-based mHealth PilotProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517700(1-23)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022

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