Virtual agents as supporting media for scientific presentations

The quality of scientific oral presentations is often poor, owing to a number of factors, including public speaking anxiety. We present DynamicDuo, a system that uses an automated, life-sized, animated agent to help inexperienced scientists deliver their presentations in front of an audience. The design of the system was informed by an analysis of TED talks given by pairs of human presenters to identify the most common dual-presentation formats and transition behaviors used. We explore the usability and acceptability of DynamicDuo in both controlled laboratory-based studies and real-world environments, and its ability to decrease public speaking anxiety and improve presentation quality. In a within-subjects study (N = 12) comparing co-presenting with DynamicDuo against solo-presenting with conventional presentation software, we demonstrated that our system led to significant improvements in public speaking anxiety and speaking confidence for non-native English speakers. Judges who viewed videotapes of these presentations rated those with DynamicDuo significantly higher on speech quality and overall presentation quality for all presenters. We also explore the affordances of the virtual co-presenter through empirical evaluation of novel roles the agent can play in scientific presentations and novel ways it can interact with the speaker in front of the audience.