Experimental assessment of the effectiveness of synthetic personae for multi-modal e-retail applications

This paper details results of an experiment to empirically evaluate the effectiveness and user acceptability of human-like synthetic agents in a multi-modal electronic retail scenario. The synthetic personae played the roles of interactive conversational sales assistants. The range of life-like personae differed with respect to gender and technology. Participants took part in the controlled experiment, which involved them eavesdropping on spoken dialogues between a customer and each of the synthetic personae. They also completed questionnaires and took part in a debriefing interview designed to elicit information relating to the effectiveness, believability and perceived quality of each of the personae. Results show that participants expected a high level of realistic and human-like verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviour in the synthetic personae. This was demonstrated in the strong preference for personae that exhibited natural facial expressions, gestures and emotions. It was...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: AGENTS
• Authors: Helen McBreen, Paul Shade, Mervyn A. Jack, Peter J. Wyard
• Keywords: AGENTS 2000, Keywords Synthetic Personae, Life-like Personae, Security Privacy, Synthetic Personae