Friday, March 4, 2011

Me and My Avatar: Exploring Users’ Comfort with Avatars for Workplace Communication.

Do business users want to be represented by avatars when engaging in enterprise-style conferencing?

“The results from this survey demonstrate that people are open to the idea of using avatars for workplace communication; however, the choice of avatar can significantly impact people’s comfort. In general, the respondents in our survey were open to interacting with a wide variety of avatars, from cartoonish to realistic and casual to formal, as long as the representation wasn’t too eerie or creepy. In contrast, users’ preferences for avatars they are willing to use to represent themselves were much more stringent. People primarily wanted more formal, realistic avatars.”


Check it out:  http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/143831/nt454-inkpen.pdf?tag=mantle_skin;content