From Assistance to Companionship - Designing Virtual Companions
Zusammenfassung
The technological progress in the eld of Articial Intelligence has already changed
the way we humans interact with information technology. Chatbots take over conver-
sations with people in customer service, and virtual assistants are available for small
tasks on our smartphones. These technologies have one thing in common: they use
human patterns and design features to interact with us, for example, by using natural
language or a human appearance. It has already been proven that humans ascribe
human attributes to these systems because of their humanization: Thus, humans are
treating computers like other humans. For this reason, throughout the work on this
research project, elements from interpersonal relationships and collaboration are ap-
plied to the human-machine interaction: The idea of the Virtual Companion was born.
At the beginning of this research project, the focus was on investigating the use of such systems in creative contexts. By identifying a fundamental lack of design knowledge for such systems in the research domain, a more holistic approach was then taken. Through design-oriented research, design knowledge for different use cases is derived in this work, as well as speciffically for the design of the proposed Virtual Companions.
Later on, this dissertation will focus on a design theory for virtual companionship, as well as a design process tailored explicitly to the instantiation of Virtual Companions. For the design process itself, the use of different methods and design tools is suggested. Especially for the conceptual design phase, the Virtual Companion Canvas was created by the author of this dissertation in order to enable a creative, holistic, and user-centered design of Virtual Companions, detached from the technological imple- mentation.
Schlüsselwörter
Virtual Companions; Conversational Agents; Human-Machine Interaction; Design Science Research; Design Knowledge; Human-AI Collaboration