Page 289 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

272 Socially Intelligent Agents

lenging problem within the area of ECA research. With technological improve-
ments this issue may be resolved, improving user confidence with respect to
the security, confidentiality and reliability of such systems.
Two thirds of the participants (24/36) thought the assistants enhanced the
services and they enjoyed speaking to them. One participant said: “I enjoyed
talking to the assistants, I was even polite to them”. Participants felt the as-
sistants should be polite and cheerful, demonstrating competence during the
interaction. To do this it was suggested that they should smile and provide
appropriate verbal and non-verbal feedback.

3. Discussion

It was hypothesised that participants would respond positively to the embod-
ied agents. The results support this prediction suggesting that 3D ECA’s have
a role to play as assistants in VRML e-commerce applications. The results
supported also a further claim that casually dressed agents are more suitable
in virtual cinemas, and formally dressed agents are more suitable in virtual
banking applications. It is important to know that ECA’s would be welcomed
in e-commerce domains especially given the number of commercial websites
that are exploring the use ECA’s as marketing tools (e.g. Extempo Inc, Virtu-
alFriends).
Participants felt the cinema was more entertaining than the travel agency
and banking application. Although ECA’s were welcomed in all three retail
applications, results suggest it is important to consider carefully the nature of
the application task and be aware that ECA’s might be more effective in less
serious applications, where the consequences of failure are less serious. Nev-
ertheless, the responses to the use of ECA’s in these more serious applications
may be improved if users’ confidence in the system can be increased and the
trustworthiness of the agent can be firmly established. Suggested methods to
achieve this included better and faster response times from the agents, hav-
ing the opportunity to enter data using the keyboard and also seeing additional
textual feedback on the interface.
All four agents were perceived to be polite, friendly, competent, cheer-
ful, sociable and agreeable; all traits important for assistants in retail and e-
commerce spaces. The trustworthiness of the agents was the only aspect where
differences between the applications emerged. The qualitative results showed
that participants were less likely to trust agents to complete tasks correctly in
the banking application. During the interviews, participants stated that they
would be more likely to use the applications if the ECA was more convincing
that the inputted information was being processed correctly.