Virtual animal characters in future communication : explorative study on character choice and agency

People need efficient means to communicate at a distance, but the available means to message can be inadequate. Any sent message might be perceived too little, fail to convey the intended emotion, or be received in a place, time or fashion that the sender would not prefer. There is room for new types of Computer-mediated communication. The thesis is an exploratory, mixed-methods study on a futuristic concept, where augmented-reality technology is used to send a lively and intelligent virtual animal character to enrich a message. The study goals are to find if the concept is acceptable, recognize common use cases for the messaging-characters, and to recognize if participants can identify different levels of independence to act, i.e. agency, for characters. To accomplish the goals, I conducted 12 interviews where I showed a low-fidelity prototype of the concept and designed animal character animations to the interviewees and had them first invent their own use scenarios and then select which characters they would use in predefined scenarios. To accomplish the agency goal, I had the interviewees order four animal animations by the level of independence to act shown by the animal. Overall, the results suggest the concept is acceptable. Augmented-reality animal messaging-characters could be used to enhance commonly send messages, and their strength is that they could be sent to act in a specific way to support the message. On types of interaction wished for, I found that most of the interviewees wished for more than animated statues, and many wished for the animals to act humanlike. However, they did not seem to wish for futuristic believable artificial intelligence. Concerning agency, the study brought into question the feasibility of defining a character’s level of agency. The results show that determining the level of agency shown in interacting animal character GIFs is either more difficult to do than I expected or outright impossible