AVotar: exploring personalized avatars for mobile interaction with public displays

Engaging users with public displays has been a major challenge in public display research. Interactive displays often suffer from being ignored by potential users. Research showed that user representations are a valid way to partially address this challenge, e.g., by attracting attention, conveying interactivity, and serving as entry points to gestures and touch interaction. We believe that user representations, particularly personalized avatars, could further increase the attractiveness of public displays, if carefully designed. In this work, we provide first insights on how such avatars can be designed and which properties are important for users. In particular, we present AVotar, a voting application for mobiles that lets users design avatars being utilized to represent them. In an user study we found that users appreciate high degrees of freedom in customization and focus on expressive facial features. Finally, we discuss the findings yielding useful implications for designers of future public display applications employing avatars.