[MUSIC] Hello, now we're going to talk about Transformed Social Interaction & Digital Dopplegangers. This is an idea that's close to my heart because I learned about it before I was a graduate student and while I was an early graduate student working in Jeremy Bailenson's lab at Stanford where he and colleagues were just coming up with these ideas back in 2005. And now we see them being manifested in these really interesting ways and getting integrated into avatar design. So after this discussion, you will be able to describe how avatar characteristics can be manipulated to transform social interaction, and explain how and why digital doppelgangers influence users, and then finally, incorporate this approaches into your avatar design without being evil, I hope. So avatar formers, more than meets the eye, or something. What do I mean by transformed social interaction? It's the idea that avatar characteristics can be decoupled from user's characteristics. A digital smile can be widened and displayed only to the certain people, your boss, the people you're attracted to or you want to be attracted to you, but not to the people who you don't like so much. Do you know what I mean? This makes it easier to make a positive impression. You can change your eye gaze so if you're talking to a group of people, every single one of them, even though you're in a virtual environment, you're looking around kind of like you would in a normal room, everyone feels like you're looking right at them. Or maybe looking at them most of the time. This is shown in research to increase the persuasion, the likability, the trust, etc. Another thing you can do to decouple the user and the avatar's characteristics is have the avatar mimic all the other people's head movements at a slight delay. Four seconds later, if you, student, sitting in my class goes like this, four seconds later my avatar will go like this and that is shown to increase how much you like me, how much you're persuaded by me, want to learn the material, etc. There's research on this and people don't detect that their head movements are being mimicked. So that's a really interesting subtle way of increasing persuasion. Another way is facial morphing. I could take your face and 40% morph it with 60% of my face. And so my face will look a little bit like you. People don't notice a 60/40 morph. And yet, they're more persuaded by it. Research has shown that if you morph political candidate with your own face, you're more likely to vote for that candidate or say you'd vote for that candidate. So this is clearly a decoupling of the way you actually appear and the avatar appears in order to increase persuasion, liking, etc. What will this do? Well, if we know that avatars can do this, people will start to adapt or realize, well, I can't trust the facial appearance, the head movements, the eye gaze, etc. And then may what distress everyone in virtual environments maybe or maybe we'll come up with new ways to kind of verify trust but these things are coming. And you have the potential to incorporate that into your avatar designs. Digital doppelgangers, similar idea. We can make avatars that look like you. Just like you, but they're not controlled by you. I can control them, and this changes the way that you think and behave when you see your avatar looking like you but doing something that you haven't told it to do. Research suggests that if you see your digital doppelganger exercising, you're more likely to exercise for a full week after that experience, or if you see your digital doppelganger gaining or losing weight, it'll change how much you eat, snack foods, etc., after the experiment, while you're sitting there, filling out a survey. Why? Well, the digital doppelganger looks like you would increases the personal relevance. It feels like it's you in a way that is not you if you just see someone else doing something, and almost feels like you are doing the thing. This can be used in advertising. Research suggests that if you see a picture of your own face endorsing a product, I love my Zojirushi, but this is your face. You're seeing me as you, but then you see yourself saying, [SOUND] well, it's still hot. It's been six hours. That's a digital endorsement by yourself of this product, and that's actually true, this thing's like crazy hot. And you're more likely to want to go buy that product and be persuaded, etc., unlike the brand Zojirushi or whatever brand it is when you see yourself endorsing it. At least compared to a random other person endorsing it. Ethics, who needs them? No, just kidding, you have to consider the ethical implications of this. Avatars can clearly be used to manipulate people in a way that you might not expect because you can decouple the characteristics of the avatar from the user, that's transform social interaction, with great design power comes great responsibility. So I want you guys to think about these implications for design but then not the evil. You can decouple these characteristics, smile, eye gaze, head movements, gestures many more you can probably think of, you can do this strategically to enhance [COUGH] social interactions. You can also do the same thing with digital doppelgangers, to increase personal relevance of the avatar, and thereby the influence of the avatar on the users. These strategies can be used for good like promoting health or prosocial outcomes, education, etc. Or evil like, well, I don't want to say what I think is evil, big corporations. [COUGH] [LAUGH] No, I mean like, fine, we need to sell products. I get it, advertising is important. But if we manipulate people to do things that they wouldn't want to do otherwise, to spend money that they don't have, to care about things that won't actually make them happy, I find that to be not a positive use of avatars. I hope you will consider your own personal ethics as you design avatars and go into the world using these tools. To recap, avatar you and user characteristics can be decoupled. This is called transformed social interaction. It leads to changes in social norms and trust. We can expect that in the future. Digital doppelgangers and avatar can be use by you, but looks like someone else and control by you, but not that other person in order to manipulate and influence that person. These things can be use to enhance user experiences in a way that makes them really invested of have stronger effects after using the avatar. But don't be evil, don't go manipulating everyone to eat a whole bunch of marshmallows. I mean, it might sound like a good idea in the near term but like all those marshmallows might make people sick and unhealthy, etc. Sorry if you love marshmallows. Thanks, I'll see you later. [MUSIC]
