Toward long-term persuasion using a personified agent

Abstract

People sometimes treat a nonliving object including a computer as if it is a living one. Today, we can interact with them regardless of location or time and we are sometimes affected by computers to decide something. Thus, strategies for weaving virtual experience generated by a computer into the real world are needed because of the prevalence of computers compared to the past. However, a room for discussion is still exist in an aspect of relationship between motivation for specific behavior and representation of information related to the behavior. In this paper, we discuss the design implications for choosing a virtual agent representing a personified object for long-term persuasion. Based on the previous experiments, we conducted a group study regarding design aspects of a personified agent. We describe the details and findings of group study; and then discuss design implications and future directions for personified agents which can construct preferable relationship with a user.