Who Do You Prefer? The Effect of Age, Gender and Role on Users’ First Impressions of Embodied Conversational Agents in eHealth

Embodied conversational agents may be used to engage users in adopting eHealth applications. The aim of this research is to investigate which design features establish a positive first impression of an agent in this context. A set of eight static agent images, different in age, gender and role, were subjected to testing in an online questionnaire. Respondents (n = 155) selected their preferred design and rated the characteristics – friendliness,...