Know Your Users! Empirical Results for Tailoring an Agent´s Nonverbal Behavior to Different User Groups

Krämer N, Hoffmann L, Kopp S. Know Your Users! Empirical Results for Tailoring an Agent´s Nonverbal Behavior to Different User Groups. In: Allbeck J, Badler N, Bickmore T, Pelachaud C, Safonova A, eds. Intelligent Virtual Agents 10th International Conference, IVA 2010, Philadelphia, PA, USA, September 20-22, 2010. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 6356. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010: 468-474.Since embodied agents are considered as equally usable by all kinds of users, not much attention has been paid to the influence of users Ì attributes on the evaluation of agents in general and their (nonverbal) behaviour in particular. Here, we present evidence from three empirical studies with the agent Max, which focus on the effects of participants` gender, age and computer literacy. The results show that all three attributes have an influence on the feelings of the participants during their interaction with Max, on the evaluation of Max, as well as on the participants` nonverbal behavior