The Power of Voice: Using Audio Podcasts to Teach Vocal Performance and Digital Communication

Today’s students often speak through mediated technologies. Thus, understanding how nonverbal cues impact meaning-making is key to understanding effective communication across mediums. This case study explores a group project where students created audio podcasts to teach others about a specific aspect of communication studies while considering the way sound and vocal performance affect the transference of the message. This article examines the use of audio podcasts as a vehicle for teaching university students about the power of paralinguistic and chronemic nonverbal behaviors

The design of speech-based automated mobile phone services using interface metaphors

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Interface metaphor is a widely used design technique for interactive computer systems. The advantages of using interface metaphors derive from their ability to promote active learning, which enables a user to transfer knowledge from a familiar real world domain, to an unfamiliar computing domain. Interface metaphor is not currently used for the design of automated phone services, and it was the aim of this thesis to examine whether interface metaphor could improve the usability of speech-activated automated mobile phone services. A human-centred design methodology was followed to generate, select, and develop potential metaphors, which were used to implement metaphor-based phone services. An experimental methodology was then used to compare the usability of the metaphor-based services with the usability of currently available number-based phone services. The first experiment examined the effect of three different interface metaphors on the usability of a mobile city guide service. Usability was measured as a range of performance and attitude measures, and was supplemented by telephone interview data. After three consecutive days of usage, participants both preferred, and performed better with, the service that was based on an office filing system metaphor. Experiment two was conducted over a six week period, and investigated the effect of users' individual differences, and the context of use, on the usability of both the office filing system metaphor-based service, and a non-metaphor service. The results showed that performance with the metaphor-based service was significantly better than performance with the non-metaphor service. The usability of the metaphor-based service was not significantly affected by users' individual characteristics and aptitudes, whereas the number-based service was, suggesting that metaphor-based services may be more usable for a wider range of potential users. Usability levels for both services were found to be consistent across both private and public locations of use, suggesting that speech-activated mobile phone services provide a flexible means of information access. Experiment three investigated the strategies used by participants when interacting with mobile phone services, specifically the visualisation strategy that was used by two thirds of the metaphor-based service participants in experiment two. In addition to the attitude and performance measures used for experiments one and two, face-to face interviews were conducted with participants. The results indicated that significantly more participants visualised the metaphor-based services relative to a non-metaphor service, and that visualisation of the service structure led to significant performance improvements. This thesis has demonstrated the usability benefits of interface metaphor as a design technique for speech-based mobile phone services. These benefits of metaphor appear to derive from their ability to provide a mental model of the phone service that can be visualised, and their ability to accommodate the individual differences of users

The design of speech-based automated mobile phone services using interface metaphors

Interface metaphor is a widely used design technique for interactive computer systems. The advantages of using interface metaphors derive from their ability to promote active learning, which enables a user to transfer knowledge from a familiar real world domain, to an unfamiliar computing domain. Interface metaphor is not currently used for the design of automated phone services, and it was the aim of this thesis to examine whether interface metaphor could improve the usability of speech-activated automated mobile phone services. A human-centred design methodology was followed to generate, select, and develop potential metaphors, which were used to implement metaphor-based phone services. An experimental methodology was then used to compare the usability of the metaphor-based services with the usability of currently available number-based phone services. The first experiment examined the effect of three different interface metaphors on the usability of a mobile city guide service. Usability was measured as a range of performance and attitude measures, and was supplemented by telephone interview data. After three consecutive days of usage, participants both preferred, and performed better with, the service that was based on an office filing system metaphor. Experiment two was conducted over a six week period, and investigated the effect of users' individual differences, and the context of use, on the usability of both the office filing system metaphor-based service, and a non-metaphor service. The results showed that performance with the metaphor-based service was significantly better than performance with the non-metaphor service. The usability of the metaphor-based service was not significantly affected by users' individual characteristics and aptitudes, whereas the number-based service was, suggesting that metaphor-based services may be more usable for a wider range of potential users. Usability levels for both services were found to be consistent across both private and public locations of use, suggesting that speech-activated mobile phone services provide a flexible means of information access. Experiment three investigated the strategies used by participants when interacting with mobile phone services, specifically the visualisation strategy that was used by two thirds of the metaphor-based service participants in experiment two. In addition to the attitude and performance measures used for experiments one and two, face-to face interviews were conducted with participants. The results indicated that significantly more participants visualised the metaphor-based services relative to a non-metaphor service, and that visualisation of the service structure led to significant performance improvements. This thesis has demonstrated the usability benefits of interface metaphor as a design technique for speech-based mobile phone services. These benefits of metaphor appear to derive from their ability to provide a mental model of the phone service that can be visualised, and their ability to accommodate the individual differences of users.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A survey on perceived speaker traits: personality, likability, pathology, and the first challenge

The INTERSPEECH 2012 Speaker Trait Challenge aimed at a unified test-bed for perceived speaker traits – the first challenge of this kind: personality in the five OCEAN personality dimensions, likability of speakers, and intelligibility of pathologic speakers. In the present article, we give a brief overview of the state-of-the-art in these three fields of research and describe the three sub-challenges in terms of the challenge conditions, the baseline results provided by the organisers, and a new openSMILE feature set, which has been used for computing the baselines and which has been provided to the participants. Furthermore, we summarise the approaches and the results presented by the participants to show the various techniques that are currently applied to solve these classification tasks

Does Social Presence Increase Perceived Competence? Evaluating Conversational Agents in Advice Giving Through a Video-Based Survey

Conversational agents (CA) have drawn increasing interest from HCI research. They have become popular in different aspects of our lives, for example, in the form of chatbots as the primary point of contact when interacting with an insurance company online. Additionally, CA find their way into collaborative settings in education, at work, or financial advisory. Researchers and practitioners are searching for ways to enhance the customer's experience in service encounters by deploying CA. Since competence is an important treat of a financial advisor, they only accept CA in their interaction with clients if it does not harm their impression on the client. However, we do not know how the social presence of the CA affects this perceived competence. We explore this by evaluating three prototypes with different social presences. For this, we conducted a video-based online survey. In contrast to prior studies focusing on single human-computer interaction, our study explores CA in a dyadic setting of two humans and one CA. First, our results support the Computers-Are-Social-Actors paradigm as the CA with a strong social presence was perceived as more competent than the other two designs. Second, our data show a positive correlation between CA's and advisor's competence. This implies a positive impact of the CA on the service encounter as the CA and advisor can be seen as a competent team

Conceptualisation and development of the admin-avatar taxonomy : antecedents, attitudinal and behavioural consequences

Academics and practitioners have increasingly acknowledged the significance of the consumer–brand relationship in both traditional and online contexts. However, the impersonal nature of the online environment is considered to be a hindrance in the development of the brand–consumer relationship. The literature suggests that strong relationship outcomes depend on successful relationship marketing tactics. Admin-avatar concept is a new concept -firstly emerged in this research- which can be used as a technological and marketing tactic. Admin-avatar can embody consumer-facing employees and mimic their real-life roles on companies’ websites, thereby playing a key role in enhancing the relationships between consumers and brands in the online environment. Despite the importance of this technology, very little attention has been paid to the investigation of the admin-avatar concept from a marketing perspective. Following a systematic review of the literature found in 10 major electronic databases and published between 1993 and 2013, significant gaps in literature were identified. Specifically, this research examines the nature of the admin-avatar concept, including its main characteristics, dimensions, and conditions as well as the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of admin-avatar users.Adopting the mixed methods design, a taxonomy was developed from interviews (qualitative phase) which laid the foundation for the development of the admin-avatar framework. Spiggle’s (1994) framework was adopted for the qualitative data analysis. A conceptual framework was developed and built on the theoretical foundations of reasoned action theory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The admin-avatar framework was empirically tested through a series of lab-based experiments (quantitative phase). Following a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to purify the scales, determine the dimensionality of the constructs and support their convergent and discriminant validity. The context used for this study was the university admissions admin-avatar. propositions were tested using repeated measures (first experimental deign study), factorial design (second experimental deign study) and serial mediation techniques for both experimental studies. The results mostly support the taxonomy developed from the qualitative phase.This thesis contributes to the new technology in marketing and practice, specifically by: (1) providing a clear and comprehensive definition of the admin-avatar concept, (2) developing a comprehensive taxonomy of admin-avatar that enriches the area of new technology in marketing by the further investigations by applying the taxonomy to other contexts (e.g., schools, banks, retails and other commercial companies), and (3) confirming the notion that the addition of an admin-avatar will transform the consumer attitude towards the website and the brand. Furthermore, the addition of an admin-avatar will prompt consumers to engage in voluntary behaviours such as saying positive things about the organisation/brand (word of mouth) and recommending the brand and its products to other potential consumers (recommendation). In other words, adding the admin-avatar on the brand website will significantly change the attitudes of brand’s consumers. These positive attitudes will encourage consumers to do voluntary behviours for the brand. From a practical perspective, these findings offer practitioners a clearer and richer understanding of the admin-avatar, facilitating appropriate designs for admin-avatar(s). The findings of this research also give practitioners clear insights into the main advantages of the admin-avatar, such as the degree of its convenience (e.g., quickness and effortless), hedonism (excitement) and attractiveness

Evaluating humanoid embodied conversational agents in mobile guide applications

Evolution in the area of mobile computing has been phenomenal in the last few years. The exploding increase in hardware power has enabled multimodal mobile interfaces to be developed. These interfaces differ from the traditional graphical user interface (GUI), in that they enable a more “natural” communication with mobile devices, through the use of multiple communication channels (e.g., multi-touch, speech recognition, etc.). As a result, a new generation of applications has emerged that provide human-like assistance in the user interface (e.g., the Siri conversational assistant (Siri Inc., visited 2010)). These conversational agents are currently designed to automate a number of tedious mobile tasks (e.g., to call a taxi), but the possible applications are endless. A domain of particular interest is that of Cultural Heritage, where conversational agents can act as personalized tour guides in, for example, archaeological attractions. The visitors to historical places have a diverse range of information needs. For example, casual visitors have different information needs from those with a deeper interest in an attraction (e.g., - holiday learners versus students). A personalized conversational agent can access a cultural heritage database, and effectively translate data into a natural language form that is adapted to the visitor’s personal needs and interests. The present research aims to investigate the information needs of a specific type of visitors, those for whom retention of cultural content is important (e.g., students of history, cultural experts, history hobbyists, educators, etc.). Embodying a conversational agent enables the agent to use additional modalities to communicate this content (e.g., through facial expressions, deictic gestures, etc.) to the user. Simulating the social norms that guide the real-world human-to-human interaction (e.g., adapting the story based on the reactions of the users), should at least theoretically optimize the cognitive accessibility of the content. Although a number of projects have attempted to build embodied conversational agents (ECAs) for cultural heritage, little is known about their impact on the users’ perceived cognitive accessibility of the cultural heritage content, and the usability of the interfaces they support. In particular, there is a general disagreement on the advantages of multimodal ECAs in terms of users’ task performance and satisfaction over nonanthropomorphised interfaces. Further, little is known about what features influence what aspects of the cognitive accessibility of the content and/or usability of the interface. To address these questions I studied the user experiences with ECA interfaces in six user studies across three countries (Greece, UK and USA). To support these studies, I introduced: a) a conceptual framework based on well-established theoretical models of human cognition, and previous frameworks from the literature. The framework offers a holistic view of the design space of ECA systems b) a research technique for evaluating the cognitive accessibility of ECA-based information presentation systems that combine data from eye tracking and facial expression recognition. In addition, I designed a toolkit, from which I partially developed its natural language processing component, to facilitate rapid development of mobile guide applications using ECAs. Results from these studies provide evidence that an ECA, capable of displaying some of the communication strategies (e.g., non-verbal behaviours to accompany linguistic information etc.) found in the real-world human guidance scenario, is not affecting and effective in enhancing the user’s ability to retain cultural content. The findings from the first two studies, suggest than an ECA has no negative/positive impact on users experiencing content that is similar (but not the same) across different locations (see experiment one, in Chapter 7), and content of variable difficulty (see experiment two, in Chapter 7). However, my results also suggest that improving the degree of content personalization and the quality of the modalities used by the ECA can result in both effective and affecting human-ECA interactions. Effectiveness is the degree to which an ECA facilitates a user in accomplishing the navigation and information tasks. Similarly, affecting is the degree to which the ECA changes the quality of the user’s experience while accomplishing the navigation and information tasks. By adhering to the above rules, I gradually improved my designs and built ECAs that are affecting. In particular, I found that an ECA can affect the quality of the user’s navigation experience (see experiment three in Chapter 7), as well as how a user experiences narrations of cultural value (see experiment five, in Chapter 8). In terms of navigation, I found sound evidence that the strongest impact of the ECAs nonverbal behaviours is on the ability of users to correctly disambiguate the navigation of an ECA instructions provided by a tour guide system. However, my ECAs failed to become effective, and to elicit enhanced navigation or retention performances. Given the positive impact of ECAs on the disambiguation of navigation instructions, the lack of ECA-effectiveness in navigation could be attributed to the simulated mobile conditions. In a real outdoor environment, where users would have to actually walk around the castle, an ECA could have elicited better navigation performance, than a system without it. With regards to retention performance, my results suggest that a designer should not solely consider the impact of an ECA, but also the style and effectiveness of the question-answering (Q&A) with the ECA, and the type of user interacting with the ECA (see experiments four and six, in Chapter 8). I found that that there is a correlation between how many questions participants asked per location for a tour, and the information they retained after the completion of the tour. When participants were requested to ask the systems a specific number of questions per location, they could retain more information than when they were allowed to freely ask questions. However, the constrained style of interaction decreased their overall satisfaction with the systems. Therefore, when enhanced retention performance is needed, a designer should consider strategies that should direct users to ask a specific number of questions per location for a tour. On the other hand, when maintaining the positive levels of user experiences is the desired outcome of an interaction, users should be allowed to freely ask questions. Then, the effectiveness of the Q&A session is of importance to the success/failure of the user’s interaction with the ECA. In a natural-language question-answering system, the system often fails to understand the user’s question and, by default, it asks the user to rephrase again. A problem arises when the system fails to understand a question repeatedly. I found that a repetitive request to rephrase the same question annoys participants and affects their retention performance. Therefore, in order to ensure effective human-ECA Q&A, the repeat messages should be built in a way to allow users to figure out how to ask the system questions to avoid improper responses. Then, I found strong evidence that an ECA may be effective for some type of users, while for some others it may be not. I found that an ECA with an attention-grabbing mechanism (see experiment six, in Chapter 8), had an inverse effect on the retention performance of participants with different gender. In particular, it enhanced the retention performance of the male participants, while it degraded the retention performance of the female participants. Finally, a series of tentative design recommendations for the design of both affecting and effective ECAs in mobile guide applications in derived from the work undertaken. These are aimed at ECA researchers and mobile guide designers

An interdisciplinary concept for human-centered explainable artificial intelligence - Investigating the impact of explainable AI on end-users

Since the 1950s, Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications have captivated people. However, this fascination has always been accompanied by disillusionment about the limitations of this technology. Today, machine learning methods such as Deep Neural Networks (DNN) are successfully used in various tasks. However, these methods also have limitations: Their complexity makes their decisions no longer comprehensible to humans - they are black-boxes. The research branch of Explainable AI (XAI) has addressed this problem by investigating how to make AI decisions comprehensible. This desire is not new. In the 1970s, developers of intrinsic explainable AI approaches, so-called white-boxes (e.g., rule-based systems), were dealing with AI explanations. Nowadays, with the increased use of AI systems in all areas of life, the design of comprehensible systems has become increasingly important. Developing such systems is part of Human-Centred AI (HCAI) research, which integrates human needs and abilities in the design of AI interfaces. For this, an understanding is needed of how humans perceive XAI and how AI explanations influence the interaction between humans and AI. One of the open questions concerns the investigation of XAI for end-users, i.e., people who have no expertise in AI but interact with such systems or are impacted by the system's decisions. This dissertation investigates the impact of different levels of interactive XAI of white- and black-box AI systems on end-users perceptions. Based on an interdisciplinary concept presented in this work, it is examined how the content, type, and interface of explanations of DNN (black box) and rule-based systems (white box) are perceived by end-users. How XAI influences end-users mental models, trust, self-efficacy, cognitive workload, and emotional state regarding the AI system is the centre of the investigation. At the beginning of the dissertation, general concepts regarding AI, explanations, and psychological constructs of mental models, trust, self-efficacy, cognitive load, and emotions are introduced. Subsequently, related work regarding the design and investigation of XAI for users is presented. This serves as a basis for the concept of a Human-Centered Explainable AI (HC-XAI) presented in this dissertation, which combines an XAI design approach with user evaluations. The author pursues an interdisciplinary approach that integrates knowledge from the research areas of (X)AI, Human-Computer Interaction, and Psychology. Based on this interdisciplinary concept, a five-step approach is derived and applied to illustrative surveys and experiments in the empirical part of this dissertation. To illustrate the first two steps, a persona approach for HC-XAI is presented, and based on that, a template for designing personas is provided. To illustrate the usage of the template, three surveys are presented that ask end-users about their attitudes and expectations towards AI and XAI. The personas generated from the survey data indicate that end-users often lack knowledge of XAI and that their perception of it depends on demographic and personality-related characteristics. Steps three to five deal with the design of XAI for concrete applications. For this, different levels of interactive XAI are presented and investigated in experiments with end-users. For this purpose, two rule-based systems (i.e., white-box) and four systems based on DNN (i.e., black-box) are used. These are applied for three purposes: Cooperation & collaboration, education, and medical decision support. Six user studies were conducted for this purpose, which differed in the interactivity of the XAI system used. The results show that end-users trust and mental models of AI depend strongly on the context of use and the design of the explanation itself. For example, explanations that a virtual agent mediates are shown to promote trust. The content and type of explanations are also perceived differently by users. The studies also show that end-users in different application contexts of XAI feel the desire for interactive explanations. The dissertation concludes with a summary of the scientific contribution, points out limitations of the presented work, and gives an outlook on possible future research topics to integrate explanations into everyday AI systems and thus enable the comprehensible handling of AI for all people.Seit den 1950er Jahren haben Anwendungen der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) die Menschen in ihren Bann gezogen. Diese Faszination wurde jedoch stets von Ernüchterung über die Grenzen dieser Technologie begleitet. Heute werden Methoden des maschinellen Lernens wie Deep Neural Networks (DNN) erfolgreich für verschiedene Aufgaben eingesetzt. Doch auch diese Methoden haben ihre Grenzen: Durch ihre Komplexität sind ihre Entscheidungen für den Menschen nicht mehr nachvollziehbar - sie sind Black-Boxes. Der Forschungszweig der Erklärbaren KI (engl. XAI) hat sich diesem Problem angenommen und untersucht, wie man KI-Entscheidungen nachvollziehbar machen kann. Dieser Wunsch ist nicht neu. In den 1970er Jahren beschäftigten sich die Entwickler von intrinsisch erklärbaren KI-Ansätzen, so genannten White-Boxes (z. B. regelbasierte Systeme), mit KI-Erklärungen. Heutzutage, mit dem zunehmenden Einsatz von KI-Systemen in allen Lebensbereichen, wird die Gestaltung nachvollziehbarer Systeme immer wichtiger. Die Entwicklung solcher Systeme ist Teil der Menschzentrierten KI (engl. HCAI) Forschung, die menschliche Bedürfnisse und Fähigkeiten in die Gestaltung von KI-Schnittstellen integriert. Dafür ist ein Verständnis darüber erforderlich, wie Menschen XAI wahrnehmen und wie KI-Erklärungen die Interaktion zwischen Mensch und KI beeinflussen. Eine der offenen Fragen betrifft die Untersuchung von XAI für Endnutzer, d.h. Menschen, die keine Expertise in KI haben, aber mit solchen Systemen interagieren oder von deren Entscheidungen betroffen sind. In dieser Dissertation wird untersucht, wie sich verschiedene Stufen interaktiver XAI von White- und Black-Box-KI-Systemen auf die Wahrnehmung der Endnutzer auswirken. Basierend auf einem interdisziplinären Konzept, das in dieser Arbeit vorgestellt wird, wird untersucht, wie der Inhalt, die Art und die Schnittstelle von Erklärungen von DNN (Black-Box) und regelbasierten Systemen (White-Box) von Endnutzern wahrgenommen werden. Wie XAI die mentalen Modelle, das Vertrauen, die Selbstwirksamkeit, die kognitive Belastung und den emotionalen Zustand der Endnutzer in Bezug auf das KI-System beeinflusst, steht im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung. Zu Beginn der Arbeit werden allgemeine Konzepte zu KI, Erklärungen und psychologische Konstrukte von mentalen Modellen, Vertrauen, Selbstwirksamkeit, kognitiver Belastung und Emotionen vorgestellt. Anschließend werden verwandte Arbeiten bezüglich dem Design und der Untersuchung von XAI für Nutzer präsentiert. Diese dienen als Grundlage für das in dieser Dissertation vorgestellte Konzept einer Menschzentrierten Erklärbaren KI (engl. HC-XAI), das einen XAI-Designansatz mit Nutzerevaluationen kombiniert. Die Autorin verfolgt einen interdisziplinären Ansatz, der Wissen aus den Forschungsbereichen (X)AI, Mensch-Computer-Interaktion und Psychologie integriert. Auf der Grundlage dieses interdisziplinären Konzepts wird ein fünfstufiger Ansatz abgeleitet und im empirischen Teil dieser Arbeit auf exemplarische Umfragen und Experimente und angewendet. Zur Veranschaulichung der ersten beiden Schritte wird ein Persona-Ansatz für HC-XAI vorgestellt und darauf aufbauend eine Vorlage für den Entwurf von Personas bereitgestellt. Um die Verwendung der Vorlage zu veranschaulichen, werden drei Umfragen präsentiert, in denen Endnutzer zu ihren Einstellungen und Erwartungen gegenüber KI und XAI befragt werden. Die aus den Umfragedaten generierten Personas zeigen, dass es den Endnutzern oft an Wissen über XAI mangelt und dass ihre Wahrnehmung dessen von demografischen und persönlichkeitsbezogenen Merkmalen abhängt. Die Schritte drei bis fünf befassen sich mit der Gestaltung von XAI für konkrete Anwendungen. Hierzu werden verschiedene Stufen interaktiver XAI vorgestellt und in Experimenten mit Endanwendern untersucht. Zu diesem Zweck werden zwei regelbasierte Systeme (White-Box) und vier auf DNN basierende Systeme (Black-Box) verwendet. Diese werden für drei Zwecke eingesetzt: Kooperation & Kollaboration, Bildung und medizinische Entscheidungsunterstützung. Hierzu wurden sechs Nutzerstudien durchgeführt, die sich in der Interaktivität des verwendeten XAI-Systems unterschieden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Vertrauen und die mentalen Modelle der Endnutzer in KI stark vom Nutzungskontext und der Gestaltung der Erklärung selbst abhängen. Es hat sich beispielsweise gezeigt, dass Erklärungen, die von einem virtuellen Agenten vermittelt werden, das Vertrauen fördern. Auch der Inhalt und die Art der Erklärungen werden von den Nutzern unterschiedlich wahrgenommen. Die Studien zeigen zudem, dass Endnutzer in unterschiedlichen Anwendungskontexten von XAI den Wunsch nach interaktiven Erklärungen verspüren. Die Dissertation schließt mit einer Zusammenfassung des wissenschaftlichen Beitrags, weist auf Grenzen der vorgestellten Arbeit hin und gibt einen Ausblick auf mögliche zukünftige Forschungsthemen, um Erklärungen in alltägliche KI-Systeme zu integrieren und damit den verständlichen Umgang mit KI für alle Menschen zu ermöglichen

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)