An investigation into the effects of Text-To-Speech voice and 3D avatars on the perception of presence and flow of live help in electronic commerce

  • Authors:

  • Lingyun Qiu;Izak Benbasat

  • Affiliations:

  • Peking University, Beijing, China;University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Expansion and growth of online shopping has led many companies to provide real-time communications on their Web sites to facilitate human-to-human interaction between service representatives and customers. The current study analyzes the interface design of such Live Help functions. More specifically, it attempts to understand whether or not the implementation of Text-To-Speech (TTS) voice communication and 3D avatars in the user interface of Live Help affects consumers' views of their own interactions with a service person.A laboratory experiment was designed to empirically test the hypotheses that TTS voice communication and 3D avatars can significantly affect consumers' perceptions of presence and flow. A 2*3 full factorial design was used (assessing three options for the use of voice and text, and two options for the use of avatars). The results of the experiment demonstrate that the presence of TTS voice significantly increases consumers' perceptions of flow (a construct depicting a user's interaction with a computer as playful and exploratory), while 3D avatars enhance consumers' feelings of telepresence (a user's experience of seeming to be present in a remote environment by means of a communication medium). These findings offer practitioners guidelines on how to improve interface designs for real-time human-to-human communications on electronic commerce Web sites.