Authors:
Jacqueline D. Bailey
;
Karen L. Blackmore
and
Robert King
Affiliation:
College of Engineering, Science and Environment, University of Newcastle, Ring Road, Callaghan, NSW, Australia
Keyword(s):
Uncanny Valley, Uncanniness, Avatar, Human Computer Interaction, Gender(Sex).
Abstract:
The creation of avatars is a two-sided coin; on one side we see developers creating avatars with the skills, time, and resources available to them. However, these resources (or lack thereof) may lead to avatars falling into the uncanny valley. On the other side are the end-users who engage with the avatar, who ultimately are the focus for these designers and developers. However, many factors can influence the perception of any avatar created beyond the level of realism, including the physical appearance of the avatar or something more fundamental like its gender(sex). Currently, there is a gap in understanding of the influence of gender(sex) in avatar uncanniness perceptions, and this is mostly missing in design decisions for avatar systems. Bridging this gap has been a source of research focus spanning the development of new technologies for avatar development to measuring end-user perceptions of those avatars. Here we add to this discussion through an experiment involving a set of
avatars presented to participants (n = 2065) who were asked to rank them from least to most uncanny based on their perceptions. This representative set of avatars were sourced from publicly available methods and have different levels of realism. Our findings indicate that perceptions of avatar uncanniness based on gender(sex) affects the overall perception of the avatar.
(More)