Agents with Faces: The Effect of Personification
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It is still an open question whether software agents
should be personified in the interface. In order to study the effects of faces and facial expressions in the interface, a series of experiments was conducted to compare subjects’ responses to and evaluation of different faces and facial expressions.
The experimental results obtained demonstrate that: 1) personified interfaces help users engage in a task, and are well suited for an entertainment domain; 2) people’s impressions of a face in a task are different from ones of the face in isolation. Perceived intelligence of a face is determined
not by the agent’s appearance but by its competence; 3) there is a dichotomy between user groups which have opposite opinions about personification. Thus, agent-based interfaces should be flexible to support the diversity of
users’ preferences and the nature of tasks.