Impact of Virtual Environment Design on the Assessment of Virtual Agents

Virtual agents usually come in a virtual environment that can be designed in various ways which might affect users. This paper presents a study that examines whether the design of the virtual environment has an impact on the assessment of the virtual agent and the interaction. In a virtual job interview training, participants interacted with a virtual interviewer that behaved exactly the same, but the background and lighting conditions were manipulated. Our results indicate that the environmental design affects the assessment of the interviewer as well as the interview process.