Avatars: a shifting interaction

• Authors: Kristine Deray
• Venue: VIP '01 Proceedings of the Pan-Sydney area workshop on Visual information processing - Volume 11
• Year: 2001

The intersection of theatre-performance, design, and informatics is a fertile area for a broader understanding of the possible design and interaction between people and avatars in simulated three dimensional information spaces. This paper outlines the theoretical modelling for the visualization of a generic avatar template applicable to information spaces. Such a representation, it is theorised, would indicate semantic and structural meanings between contents of a document collection of an information space to a person. The depiction would be mapped to the visualization engine and represented in a three-dimensional information space. Avatars require some artificial intelligence, (AI), which indicates knowledge about the structure and contents of the underlying information, if they are to aide the user in tasks related to the information system. This paper proposes that such knowledge will be represented in the geometry and structure of the avatar visualised at the interface. In this manner, the design and form of the avatar functions as a content analysis tool representing interaction between users and an information space. The grouping of such representations would lend the added benefit of a history of notational avatars tracing the user's path in an information space over set duration. Using object orientated programming, variables are attached to the body, in this case, the avatar. Depending upon the user's interaction with the hypermedia system different patterns will occur.It is theorised that such an approach to the modelling of avatars would enhance the communication of knowledge and meaning in large data sets where recurring problems of navigation are compounded by the representation of scalability to users.