Abstract
An interface character might be the computer program itself or may be part of an interface; it might be equipped with the ability to communicate with users via facial expression, body language, gestures or verbal communication. Since interface characters can communicate with users in the most natural way as interpersonal communication, they therefore play an important role in communicating between interfaces and users. According to the paradigm of “Computer as a social actor”, users interact with each other based on social rules, meaning that as well as having a positive impact, interface characters can also have a negative impact on the users. Therefore, we can refer to related social-psychology research on interpersonal interaction to explore if the rules can also be applied to computer interface characters. This research explores many social science subjects such as “Beauty is good,” “Halo effects,” “similarity-attraction,” “complementarity-attraction,” and “gender differences” to exam the effects of the physical attractiveness and personality of computer interface characters on the engagement, social presence and satisfaction of users of both genders. This study uses a 2 x 2 x 2 experimental design, with the independent variables being physical attractiveness (beauty and ugly), personality similarity or complementarity and the genders of participants (males and females). The dependent variables are engagement (involvement and distance), social presence and satisfaction with the interface characters. In the task undertaken for this study, participants are guided by a female cartoon character to do a tour of western paintings; the personalities and the appearance of the interface characters are designed for the independent variables. The results demonstrate that although beautiful interface characters can increase the user’s sense of involvement and social presence, and can decrease the sense of distance, ugly interface characters can also increase the sense of involvement, and decrease the sense of distance. This means that the content of the interaction between users and interface characters decreases the negative effects of appearance on the participants. Furthermore, because all kinds of interface characters are designed to assist in users’ tasks, no matter what kind of personality the participants are, they like the extroverted or introverted interface characters. Besides, female participants show their empathy to the ugly female interface characters, giving higher aesthetics ratings than males. Social presence also plays an important role in the interaction between interface characters and participants: higher social presence brings higher satisfaction. The results of this study suggest that designers should pay more attention to the contents of the interaction because users will change their first impressions caused by the physical attractiveness of interface characters after they interact with them. On the other hand, increasing the social presence of interface characters via the degrees of anthropopathy, language cues and body language will increase users’ satisfaction. However, designers should also pay attention to the different effects between interface characters and users caused by different genders.