An Exploratory Analysis of ECA Characteristics

To help guide design and development of embodied conversational agents, this study reviews the evolving qualities of naturalistic agents by identifying and tracking their most relevant features. The study extends prior taxonomies of characteristics of ECAs, developing a rubric that distinguishes agents’ visual and functional characteristics. The study applies the rubric to 15 agents representing different genres of games, distinguishing agents in terms of their naturalistic qualities. The study explores changes in qualities of agents as a function of time.