Improving communication with adaptive and personalized agents
Vienna Workshop "Agent Culture", 24-25 August 2001
Benoît Morel
Cantoche Productions, Paris
The World becomes more and more virtual in all its sectors such ascinema or TV, with movies like, recently, Final Fantasy, in thestreets with interactive terminals, on cars with embedded systems,and even at home with video games and, first of all, the computeritself. Computer usage is different in different countries, ingeneral more developed in occidental ones.
The arrival of these new technologies has been quick and violentso that the user can be confused and lost because this new world iscold and austere. This is the reason why new types of Man/Machineinterfaces are important. Agents are the best representatives ofthese interfaces because they are user-friendly and can lead to aconviviality that has been terribly missing until now.
Before to speak about them, it is important to explain ourdefinition of an Agent: What we call an Agent, is an interactiveanimated character with the ability to be more or less intelligentand easily adapted to every application. In fact, we have to considerthese Agents as actors who can move, speak in every language, listen,understand and who can be directed thanks to a range of complementarytechnologies.
Isn’t it more pleasant to be welcomed by a character with theability to understand and above all, with a pleasant aspect?Actually, these two words - "pleasant" and "intelligent" - turn up inpractically each Request for proposal from our clients.
In everyday life and wherever you are in the world, you need to bewith people who help you, who reassure you , who advise you. Thisperson must have a good knowledge of what you are looking for andmust be in accordance with its environment.In the virtual world,it’s exactly the same. Agents will be beneficial to users butalso to the companies who want to use them because they will enhancethe company’s image, make applications more comprehensible andhelp the user find a certain product or service more easily.
In my presentation, I will talk about the graphical andbehavioural aspects of Agents. We will study different cases of ourclients, such as Microsoft, for whom we have created an agent forWindows XP, or Hewlett Packard’s agent for the Pavilioncomputers, focusing on cultural and functional characteristics.
Finally, I will speak about our agent concept, design, modeling,animation, editing of bheaviours and functionalities, etc. and how weimplement them according to the application.