How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping

With the prevalence of online shopping, companies began to provide real-time communications on their websites to facilitate human-to-human interactions between sales representative and online customers. This study investigates the interface design of such "Live Help" functions. More specif...

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Main Author: Qiu, Lingyun
Language:English
Published: 2009
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14044
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spelling ndltd-LACETR-oai-collectionscanada.gc.ca-BVAU.2429-140442014-03-14T15:47:16Z How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping Qiu, Lingyun With the prevalence of online shopping, companies began to provide real-time communications on their websites to facilitate human-to-human interactions between sales representative and online customers. This study investigates the interface design of such "Live Help" functions. More specifically, it attempts to understand whether the implementation of Text-To-Speech (TTS) voice and 3D avatar in the user interface of "Live Help" affects user's views of the interaction, the service staff, and the website. A laboratory experiment was designed and conducted to empirically test the hypotheses that TTS voice and avatar will have significant effects on user's perception of presence, flow, and trust. A 3 by 2 full factorial design (with 3 different levels on the dimension of voice and 2 different levels on the dimension of avatar) was adopted and 72 university students and staff members were recruited for the study. Results showed that TTS voice had significant effects on increasing user's perceptions of flow and trust, while 3D avatar enhances user's feeling of telepresence. These findings not only provide a good starting point for studying the virtual communication experience in online shopping, but also offer practitioners useful guidelines on how to integrate and improve the interface design of real time human-to-human communications on the shopping websites. 2009-10-19T21:54:18Z 2009-10-19T21:54:18Z 2002 2009-10-19T21:54:18Z 2002-11 Electronic Thesis or Dissertation http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14044 eng UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/]
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
description With the prevalence of online shopping, companies began to provide real-time communications on their websites to facilitate human-to-human interactions between sales representative and online customers. This study investigates the interface design of such "Live Help" functions. More specifically, it attempts to understand whether the implementation of Text-To-Speech (TTS) voice and 3D avatar in the user interface of "Live Help" affects user's views of the interaction, the service staff, and the website. A laboratory experiment was designed and conducted to empirically test the hypotheses that TTS voice and avatar will have significant effects on user's perception of presence, flow, and trust. A 3 by 2 full factorial design (with 3 different levels on the dimension of voice and 2 different levels on the dimension of avatar) was adopted and 72 university students and staff members were recruited for the study. Results showed that TTS voice had significant effects on increasing user's perceptions of flow and trust, while 3D avatar enhances user's feeling of telepresence. These findings not only provide a good starting point for studying the virtual communication experience in online shopping, but also offer practitioners useful guidelines on how to integrate and improve the interface design of real time human-to-human communications on the shopping websites.
author Qiu, Lingyun
spellingShingle Qiu, Lingyun
How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
author_facet Qiu, Lingyun
author_sort Qiu, Lingyun
title How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
title_short How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
title_full How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
title_fullStr How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
title_full_unstemmed How to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3D avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
title_sort how to provide "live help" : the effects of text-to-speech voice and 3d avatar on perception of presence in electronic shopping
publishDate 2009
url http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14044
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