The Effects of Virtual Character's Intelligence and Task's Complexity during an Immersive Jigsaw Puzzle Co-solving Task
Minsoo Choi, Dixuan Cui, Alexandros Koilias, Christos Mousas · 2024
Virtual character’s intelligence and task complexity are essential components for the design of collaboration between humans and virtual characters. However, studies have yet to explore the impact of a virtual character’s intelligence and task complexity during a collaboration task. To explore these impacts, we implemented a jigsaw puzzle co-solving experience and conducted a within-group study (N = 27) following a 2 (intelligence: low vs. high) × 2 (complexity: low vs. high) study design. During the puzzle co-solving process, we collected participants’ gaze data for each experimental condition. After our participants completed each condition (co-solved the jigsaw puzzle), they answered a survey that captured several variables. We found several significant main and interaction effect results indicating the impact of the virtual character’s intelligence and the task’s complexity. Specifically, the virtual character’s intelligence impacted most survey ratings, including the virtual character’s intelligence, perceived collaboration, self-confidence, and perceived contribution. Also, the task complexity affected perceived collaboration, the virtual character’s public awareness, and self-confidence. Furthermore, we found that the virtual character’s intelligence and complexity dominantly impacted our participants’ task load and perception of the virtual character’s confidence. Moreover, we found that our participants gazed at the virtual character and the puzzle piece more often than the puzzle goal across all experimental conditions. Our findings can inform the design of intelligent virtual characters that co-solve tasks with users.