Design criteria, techniques and case studies for creating and evaluating interactive experiences for virtual humans
Jonathan S. Gratch, Stacy Marsella, Arjan Egges, Anton Eliëns, Thomas Rist · Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings · 2006
How does one go about designing a human? With the rise in recent years of virtual humans this is no longer purely a philosophical question. Virtual humans are intelligent agents with a body, often a human-like graphical body, that interact verbally and non-verbally with human users on a variety of tasks and applications. At a recent meeting on this subject, the above authors participated in a several day discussion on the question of virtual human design. Our working group approached this question from the perspective of interactivity. Specifically, how can one design effective interactive experiences involving a virtual human, and what constraints does this goal place on the form and function of an embodied conversational agent. Our group grappled with several related questions: What ideals should designers aspire to, what sources of theory and data will best lead to this goal and what methodologies can inform and validate the design process? This article summarizes our output and suggests a specific framework, borrowed from interactive media design, as a vehicle for advancing the state of interactive experiences with virtual humans.