posted on 2007-01-01, 00:00authored byJodi Forluzzi, John Zimmerman, Vince Mancuso, Sonya Kwak
For many years, the HCI community has harbored a vision of interacting
with intelligent, embodied computer agents. However, the reality of this
vision remains elusive. From an interaction design perspective, little is known about how to specifically design an embodied agent to support the task it will perform and the social interactions that will result. This paper presents design
research that explores the relationship between the visual features of embodied
agents and the tasks they perform, and the social attributions that result. Our results show a clear link between agent task and agent form and reveals that people often prefer agents who conform to gender stereotypes associated with
tasks. Based on the results of this work, we provide a set of emerging design
considerations to help guide interaction designers in creating the visual form of
embodied agents.