In Situ Observations of Non-verbal Emotional Behaviours for Multimodal Avatar Design in e-Commerce

Abstract

This paper reports an empirical study on non-verbal emotional behaviours - facial expressions and body gestures - with the ultimate goal of informing the design of multimodal avatars with authentic emotional expressions for e-commerce websites. In the study 12 salespersons were observed when they were interacting with 29 customers in two furniture retail shops. To facilitate the observational process, we developed a template called NEBOT with a set of common facial expressions and body gestures in human-human communications. Results indicate that neutral facial expressions were more frequently used than expected. Implications for improving the template as a research tool in other contexts and for designing avatars for e-commerce websites are inferred.