First impressions: The importance of visual appearance in the design of conversational agents

The growth of conversational agents in education continues to expand and there is a growing body of evidence on the importance of visual characteristics on the overall learning experience. This chapter provides a brief overview of research in this area drawing on the literature from embodied conversational agents, animated/virtual pedagogical agents and our own work with conversational agents as historical figures (CAHF). Four aspects of visual appearance are described (i.e., realism, faces, roles and visual style) along with a selected review of research within each aspect. More recent approaches are described that provide templates for visual design guidelines and while progress has been made, there is still a need for more systematic research on the visual elements that give rise to first impression as well as the interactions among elements.