This thesis seeks to investigate the usability issues surrounding multiple embodied conversational agents in assessing the effectiveness of systems employing multiple agents, especially as to date, little work has been carried out in this field. A history of conversational embodied agents is presented, along with design and interface development used throughout the thesis. Four incremental, empirical studies are presented that are designed to investigate the usability of multiple agents in varying manners, in 3D virtual banking environments. Firstly multiple agents are compared to a single agent, in a scenario where information and dialogue are similar in both versions. Whilst limitations are pointed out with the multiple agent design, promising results are reported which warrant further research. Two further empirical evaluations are reported in an attempt to optimise the usability of multiple embodied conversational agents in an eBanking environment. A fourth and final evaluation revisits the issue of comparing a single agent version to an optimised multiple agent version. This demonstrates the advantages of optimisations derived from the previous experiments, in making the multiple agent version as usable as the single agent version. The conclusions from this body of research support the use and further research of multiple embodied conversational agents in future eBanking services.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:643342 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Collin, Stuart David |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/11999 |
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