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arXiv · 2506.10462

Are We Generalizing from the Exception? An In-the-Wild Study on Group-Sensitive Conversation Design in Human-Agent Interactions

Ana Müller·Sabina Jeschke·Anja Richert
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Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of a group-adaptive conversation design in two socially interactive agents (SIAs) through two real-world studies. Both SIAs - Furhat, a social robot, and MetaHuman, a virtual agent - were equipped with a conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) backend combining hybrid retrieval and generative models. The studies were carried out in an in-the-wild setting with a total of $N = 188$ participants who interacted with the SIAs - in dyads, triads or larger groups - at a German museum. Although the results did not reveal a significant effect of the group-sensitive conversation design on perceived satisfaction, the findings provide valuable insights into the challenges of adapting CAI for multi-party interactions and across different embodiments (robot vs.\ virtual agent), highlighting the need for multimodal strategies beyond linguistic pluralization. These insights contribute to the fields of Human-Agent Interaction (HAI), Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), and broader Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), providing insights for future research on effective dialogue adaptation in group settings.

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Ana Müller, Sabina Jeschke, Anja Richert. 2025-06-12. Are We Generalizing from the Exception? An In-the-Wild Study on Group-Sensitive Conversation Design in Human-Agent Interactions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10462

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