Talking faces in lab and field trials: A view on evaluation settings and user involvement results of avatar based user interaction techniques in three ambient assisted living projects

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in Ambient Assisted Living technology to support older adults. Research and industry are working jointly on reliable and suitable solutions to help older adults to remain healthy and safe while living independently. Appropriate interaction methods play an important role for the acceptance of such supporting systems. Today, solutions mainly rely on common and well-evaluated interaction techniques such as TV remotes or touch screens to enhance the usability. Projects presented in this work are based on the same interaction techniques, but additionally enrich the interaction experience with a real-time, empathic virtual assistance avatar. In this paper, we present evaluation settings and user involvement results acquired from three different Ambient Assisted Living projects focusing on avatar-based user interaction. Our results show that avatar-based interaction in the Ambient Assisted Living context is very well applicable, especially when combined with speech recognition.