We created the characters Agneta & Frida with the intent to strengthen and encourage exploration of information spaces. In a follow-up study we tried to capture whether users found the characters believable, whether they raised affective responses in users, and whether they created a richer more narratively oriented experience of the space. In order to do so, we had to develop new criteria and methods of understanding users ’ conceptions and affective responses. We discuss the study in detail, as well as the general implications for how to perform user studies and design of character-enhanced systems. 1

On the world-wide-web we see a growing number of general HCI interfaces, interfaces to educational or entertainment systems, interfaces to professional environments, etc., where an animated face, a cartoon character or a human-like virtual agent has the task to assist the user, to engage the user into a conversation or to educate the user. What to say about the effects a human-like agent has on a student's performance? We discuss agents, their intelligence, embodiment and interaction modalities. In particular we introduce viewpoints and questions about roles embodied agents can play in educational environments.

This paper is concerned with the design of animated agents for applications in e-commerce virtual marketplaces. This brings challenges such as personalisation, believability, conversational skills and multimodal interaction. We have developed a multi-agent architecture for a virtual sales assistant. Agents use high level abstractions for representing, reasoning and planning human-like dialogs. These include mental abstractions such as belief, desire and intention as well as social abstractions such as role relationships and commitments. We design interactions through the development of protocols which specify conventions of behaviour and endow agents with social awareness. Fuzzy modelling is used to model a user’s preferences and subjective perception of product attributes. This synergy between existing technologies has the potential to fulfil the requirements for the next generation of virtual marketplaces. 1