Maurizio Vergari — Page 2

arXiv2024

Influence of Personality and Communication Behavior of a Conversational Agent on User Experience and Social Presence in Augmented Reality

A virtual embodiment can benefit conversational agents, but it is unclear how their personalities and non-verbal behavior influence the User Experience and Social Presence in Augmented Reality (AR). We asked 30 users to converse with a virtual assistant who gives recommendations about city activities. The participants interacted with two different personalities: Sammy, a cheerful blue mouse, and Olive, a serious green human-like agent. Each was presented with two body languages - happy/friendly and annoyed/unfriendly. We conclude how agent representation and humor affect User Experience aspects, and that body language is significant in the evaluation and perception of the AR agent.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Exploring users' sense of safety in public using an Augmented Reality application

Nowadays, Augmented Reality (AR) is available on almost all smartphones creating some exciting interaction opportunities but also challenges. For example, already after the famous AR app Pokemon GO was released in July 2016, numerous accidents related to the use of the app were reported by users. At the same time, the spread of AR can be noticed in the tourism industry, enabling tourists to explore their surroundings in new ways but also exposing them to safety issues. This preliminary study explores users' sense of safety when manipulating the amount and UI elements visualization parameters of Point of Interest (POI) markers in a developed AR application. The results show that the amount of POI markers that are displayed is significant for participants' sense of safety. The influence of manipulating UI elements in terms of transparency, color, and size cannot be proven. Nevertheless, most tested people stated that manipulating transparency and size somehow influences their sense of safety, so a closer look at them should be taken in future studies.

cs.HC↗