5 research outputs found
PROGETTAZIONE E SVILUPPO DI UN TOOL USER-FRIENDLY PER L'INTEGRAZIONE E LA GESTIONE DI ASSISTENTI VIRTUALI IN SERVIZI WEB
Sfruttando le potenzialitĂ di uno speech engine,di un software per la creazione di avatar animati e della tecnologia java/jsp ho sviluppato un tool lato server che permette l'integrazione e la gestione di assistenti virtuali per servizi web
Assisting E-Government Users with Animated Talking Faces
E-GOVERNMENT (E-GOV) IS THE USE of information technologies to deliver government
services through Web sites devoted to users interacting with government. E-gov is a
growing sector of Web usage, driven by the expectation of improving the delivery of public
administration services, easier data integration in information systems, and overall cost
reduction [6]. However, citizens use e-gov services reluctantly, partly due to usability problems
[1].
To improve the user experience of such sites, we developed a prototype e-gov Web site
using an animated face (AF) with text-to-speech (TTS) voice to assist users. We used the AF
because faces stimulate human attention [3], and anthropomorphic agents increase users’
perception of flow [5] (flow is a construct depicting a user’s interactions as playful and
exploratory). Consistent with physiological and computer science studies, we conducted
user tests to measure how adding AF influences users’ behavior. Our results show that the
AF proved effective in reducing the number of visited pages when users had specific tasks
to perform on a Web site; however, contrary to our expectations, task completion times
were not significantly altered by the introduction of the AF. We conclude that AF can be
useful in e-gov Web sites, but not in situations where time to perform a task is critical or
must be shortened