Title
‘More like a person than reading text in a machine’: Characterizing User Choice of Embodied Agents vs. Conventional GUIs on Smartphones
Abstract
BSTRACTEmbodied conversational agents (ECAs) provide an interface modality on smartphones that may be particularly effective for tasks with significant social, affective, reflective, and narrative aspects, such as health education and behavior change counseling. However, the conversational medium is significantly slower than conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for brief, time-sensitive tasks. We conducted a randomized experiment to determine user preferences in performing two kinds of health-related tasks—one affective and narrative in nature and one transactional—and gave participants a choice of a conventional GUI or a functionally equivalent ECA on a smartphone to complete the task. We found significant main effects of task type and user preference on user choice of modality, with participants choosing the conventional GUI more often for transactional and time-sensitive tasks.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1145/3411763.3451664
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Keywords
DocType
Citations 
virtual agent, mobile computing, interface modality, experiment
Conference
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Stefan Olafsson113.40
Jeremy N. Bailenson211913.36
Everlyne Kimani334.46
Teresa K. O'Leary401.35
Timothy Bickmore52581318.35