Virtual humans and avatars have become integral components of immersive technologies, shaping various aspects of virtual worlds. This dissertation investigates the nuanced interactions between user demographics and virtual avatars, exploring their impact on perception, embodiment, and persuasive communication. The first study investigates the effectiveness of different speech fidelity levels in virtual humans, revealing gender-dependent perceptions of trustworthiness. Building on this, this dissertation introduces the \textit{Virtual Avatar Library for Inclusion and Diversity} (\textit{VALID}), offering a comprehensive resource for advancing racial diversity and inclusion in virtual environments. Through rigorous validation studies, we shed light on the perception of avatar characteristics worldwide, emphasizing the importance of accurately representing diverse demographics. This dissertation also examines the influence of matching avatar demographics to user demographics on sense of embodiment in virtual reality. We found significant effects of matched ethnicity and gender on sense of embodiment, revealing the importance of providing diverse representations for users in applications and experiments. Furthermore, we explored the intricate interactions between user demographics and avatar matching effects, revealing how some demographics may be disproportionally affected by unmatched avatars. Through a diverse array of experiments and validation studies, this dissertation provides valuable insights into the design, perception, and implications of virtual representations in immersive technologies and paves the way for more inclusive and effective virtual environments.

This research focuses on the use of feminized virtual avatars (FVAs) in the fashion industry and explores the risk of using FVAs for the appropriation and exploitation of marginalized communities and identities. Through a critical visual analysis of the virtual avatars Shudu Gram and Miquela Sousa, this study analyzes how they are made to represent gendered and racialized women’s bodies. The research aims to understand how the representations of FVAs reflect and influence power dynamics and social inequalities. This thesis found that the representations of Shudu and Miquela reflect and reinforce racial stereotypes, perpetuate gender inequalities, and uphold unrealistic beauty standards. Moreover, their representations of a Black woman and a Latina reinforce the exotification and Othering of Black women and Latinas, reducing their identities to a commodified aesthetic. Furthermore, the sexualized representations of Shudu and Miquela reinforce gender stereotypes and power imbalances. Finally, the lack of agency and autonomy in FVAs further complicates objectifying and exotifying portrayals. This research's theoretical and practical implications emphasize the need for critical analysis, ethical considerations, and inclusive practices in using FVAs. The study highlights the importance of critically analyzing FVAs and their implications within the context of gendered colonial legacies and structural inequalities.

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Food waste has become a serious matter which negatively impacts the environment worldwide. This raises the issue of managing food waste more efficiently, which in many cases can be aided with technology, and there has been previous research suggesting possible solutions. On a household level, food waste could be better managed by providing individuals with visual representations or summaries of how much they waste, and hopefully motivating them to waste less. However, typicalcharts used for visualizing data often fail to motivate users. Abstract visualizations might have a better chance at doing so. The focus of this master thesis is to design and develop a responsive web application which helps users keep track of their food purchases. Using the application, users can create product lists and perform two actions on products: consuming and wasting. The app prototype aims to increase an individual’s motivation towards wasting less food by providing a virtual “tree” visualization with similar features to a real tree such as branches and leaves. However, instead of growing depending on its’ environment like a real tree would, this virtual “tree” representation would grow based on the user’s actions: subject to how much food is consumed or wasted, the virtual tree will grow further or gradually start withering. A user study was conducted which involved a questionnaire surveying the general attitudes and practices of the participants regarding their household food waste, which was sent to participants both before and after using the resulting prototype.This enabled for relevant comparisons to be made between the user attitudes before and after trying the prototype. Furthermore, at the end of study, two user groups could be identified: most active participants and less active participants. This classification was made based on the activity logs gathered from the application database, where “most active” refers to participants that used the application regularly during the evaluation period and “less active” means the participants with very little or no activity recorded in the database. A final questionnaire was developed in two variants for collecting user feedback, tailored for the two groups identified: most active participants and less active participants. These surveys were shared with a group of participants who had agreed on using the resulting prototype for a period of at least two weeks. The results of the user study suggested that users were positive to the concept of the prototype and most users showed a keen interest in future improvements of the application. It is hoped that this work makes a relevant contribution to the areas of household food waste management, digital inventories, and web technologies, specifically web applications.

Avatars are used more and more in online communication, in both games and socialmedia. At the same time technology for facial puppetry, where expressions of the user aretransferred to the avatar, has developed rapidly. Why is it that facial puppetry, despite this,is conspicuous by its absence? This thesis analyzes the available and upcoming solutions for facial puppetry, if a com-mon framework or library can exist and what can be done to simplify the process for de-velopers who wants to implement facial puppetry. A survey was conducted to get a better understanding of the technology. It showedthat there is no standard yet for how to describe facial expressions, but part of the marketis converging towards a common format. It also showed that there is no existing inter-face that can handle communication with tracking devices or translation between differentexpression formats. Several prototypes for recording and streaming facial expression data from differentsources were implemented as a practical test. This was done to evaluate the complexity ofimplementing real-time facial puppetry. It showed that it is not always possible to integratethe available tracking solutions into an existing project. When integration was possible itrequired a lot of work. The best way to get tracking right now seems to be to implement astandalone program for tracking that streams the tracked data to the main application. In summary it is the poor integrability of the solutions that makes it problematic forthe developers, together with a wide variety of facial expression formats. A software thatacts like a bridge between the tracking solutions and the game could allow for translationbetween different formats and simplify implementation of support. In the future, instead of working towards making all tracking solutions output stan-dardized tracking data, research further how to build a framework that can handle differ-ent configurations. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>