Reading assignment: Chit Chat Club website

Fully Embodied Conversational Avatars: Making Communicative Behaviors Autonomous, Cassell, J. and Vilhjálmsson, H. (1999). Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2(1): 45-64.

Reading assignment: read chapter 5 of Social Catalysts . Eric Paulos and John Canny PRoP: Personal Roving Presence

Design problem: redesign/refine 2 of the designs we discussed in class to dayavatar chair. Include in your design the interface for the remote user as well. At least one of your designs must use TEXT as the primary form of input.

Things to think about

- how does the remote particpant know if people are at the table? Follow the conversation? know how he or she appears to others? What control does this person have on the avatars appearance?

- how are entrances and exits managed?

- Keep it practical. These installations will need to be robust - used in a public setting by many people, in a real cafe with food and drink. We are avoiding robotics for a number of reasons, primarily because the likelihood of their breaking down is too high. Think of ways to use lights or changing the size of a video image instead to achive similar effects.

- Think about how to incorporate text. Some of the remote users may have only text / mouse input. Text display can be quite poetic - think about its shape, motion, etc.

- describe the scale of your piece. Why have you chosen that size?

- How does the piece work? Highlight any places where the piece is making complex analyses about word meanings or physical relatonships- these may need to be reformulated.

-Think about the users' motivation. If we expect them to behave a certain way or to provide certain imput, what inspires them to do so?

Design problem:  Create a final design and spec for one of the 3 models.

1. The text avatar: This avatar has a text only interface. The remote user hears audio and sees video, but inputs text. The text will be very visual. What is the shape of the sculpture? How does the text move? Is there any special input for effect?

2. The abstract audio avatar: This sculpture has images and audio for input. There is a simple graphical mode that is in efect when the sculpture is occupied. There is also a shape that pulsates with the volume of the audio input. In addition, the user can draw or add pictures to it. What sort of shape should this sculpture be? How does the remote user become motivated to decorate this design?

3. The facial avatar. This one has audio input and has a face. What is the shape of this sculpture? is it freestanding or hanging? What is the material? How is the face controlled? Is it a control of emotion? indication of attention? Is the face abstract - does it behave like a normal face or do say the eyes appear sometime and the lips at others? how does it related to the table?

For all of these:

• how do they look when unoccupied? When occuped but idle? When in active use? What are the entrances and exits like?
• Would it make sense to incorporate ideas such as growing and shrinking scale of projection?
• What about other lights, etc.
• How do they relate to the other people in the space? Are they moveable?
• Where does the equipment go? Where is the projector? How many camersa/ microphones does it need?
• Will text or sounds from past conversations be incorporated in the piece?
• What can we learn from this piece? What do we want to observe about how people use it (or all 3)? Are there experiments we would want to run?