Interactions and Designs - Assignment Example

For this assignment, I decided to study the virtual agent at Ikea’s website. The agent is known as Anna and appears on the Ikea’s website to assist the visitors. The agent provides answers to the user’s questions and directs them to the information they are looking for. The users enter their queries, questions or keywords in a text box and the agent either displays the answers in a text form or opens up a webpage for the user. Anna is an animated virtual agent which is based on achieving visual simulation of an actual agent. The agent is a flash based animated program which prompts the user to enter to enter keywords or questions. Based on these keywords or questions, the program searches the database, pretty much like a search engine would, and displays the best result to the user. The result is an answer to the question in a short sentence. Sometimes, depending on the keywords, the agent displays a webpage to the user relevant to his keywords. The agent is an interactive feature which draws out human emotions. As opposed to just a textual display of help, the user gets a more interactive feeling. The user can actually have the experience of talking to an actual agent or communicating with him. Anna is designed to have a personality of a support executive. She communicates in a professional and friendly way and the tone is also of a typical helpful support executive. Her personality appeals to the user and they can relate her with an actual Ikea support person. This personality is well expressed with her facial expression. She always has a smile on her face whenever she is listening or coming up with an answer. She has blue eyes which keep blinking and support her facial expressions. Her dressing also well matches her personality. She is dressed in the typical outfit of an Ikea support executive in the same yellow and blue Ikea color. She has a two dimensional look of a human being and looks more like a human than an animated creature. Hence the looks are designed to look realistic. Anna appears in a separate popup window and communicates the user in that window. It has a text box for questions and the answers appear only on that screen. Although the web pages she wants the users to see appear in the existing window. I feel her level of discourse is just fine. She greets the user well and has a friendly tone and attitude, but does not flatter the user a lot or patronize him. Too much patronizing can also tick the user off. As far as I tested, the agent was very helpful in assisting the user in making purchases or finding the right information. Anna displays the answer that matches with the keywords user types and guides the user to the relevant pages. If there is a keyword she does not understand, she asks the user to rephrase the question. If the user has typed an inappropriate question, she refuses to give out a reply to that. This shows that she is well programmed to appear as realistic and human-like as possible in answering questions. She is also very neutral in her approach. Although she tries to make promote the products well, she is not pushy in her approach. Sometimes, being too pushy can irritate the user. Anna is a female, and I believe this is one reason which makes her a successful agent. This is because females are more attractive when it comes to being displayed on the screen; they have a softer tone and a more friendly personality. As opposed to a male representative, I feel a female one can be more attractive for customers. When it comes to trusting the agent, I feel I can seek guidance from her in finding the products of my choice, but I cannot trust her to the extent that I buy whatever she recommends. I understand that she is after all a program which has limited knowledge. There would be certain information (price updates, new products, discounts etc) that a human representative would know better. Hence, I would not fully trust her to accept her advice as it is. Although Anna is very efficient, friendly and helpful, there are certain features she lacks. These, if added, could make the agent more powerful and persuasive. One of these is the speech functionality. Anna is only text-based and lacks speech capabilities. Adding these could make her more attractive. Secondly, she could also start accepting voice commands like a human support executive. Anna currently does not have information about the user who she is talking to. If she can save the user details and next time call the user with his name and other information, it would make the user feel good and increase the appeal of the agent. As opposed to an agent-based interface, many websites still offer the traditional approach to users to look for products and other information. Successful websites like Amazon.com offer a conceptual model based approach to finding information. These websites employ a number of methods. Firstly, they divide the products into categories and sub-categories and the users are able to reach the product of their choice through that. The products are divided by multiple categories which makes it very easy to find information. For instance, a household use electronic item would appear in the household category as well as electronics category. There is also the search engine facility which allows the user to search for product information. For every product the user visits, it displays the testimonials from users who have bought the product. They display the user’s comment and opinions. Positive comments serve as a recommendation to the user. Moreover, it also shows the products which other users bought together with the current product the user is viewing. This also serves as a promotion tool. As far as Amazon is concerned, the interface is very general and not customized to suit the user. It does not offer any personalization of the webpage. Every user is welcomed and treated in the same way. In my opinion, the site could be improved by having an agent. This is because, in many cases, the users want a more interactive look and feel rather than the traditional textual interface. The agent can assist the user in finding the exact item and can also provide product recommendations. As far as trust is concerned, I believe, both the agent-based interface and the traditional conceptual model based interface are programmed. Both are built upon the same information. It is only the representation of information and the interface to communicate which differs. Hence, I can trust an agent as well as a traditional interface equally well. However, with an agent, I feel I can have better interaction. Rather than having to look at search results, an intelligent agent can guide me towards specific information. They can address to my queries better and take me to the relevant portion in the website. Read More