MAINTAINING ENGAGEMENT IN LONG-TERM INTERVENTIONS WITH RELATIONAL AGENTS

We discuss issues in designing virtual humans for applications that require long-term voluntary use and the problem of maintaining engagement with users over time. Concepts and theories related to engagement from a variety of disciplines are reviewed. We describe a platform for conducting studies into long-term interactions between humans and virtual agents and present the results of two longitudinal, randomized, controlled experiments in which the effect of manipulations of agent behavior on user engagement was assessed.