The Influence of Proactivity on Interactive Help Agents

The present study examined the effects of proactivity on users’ perception of an anthropomorphic user interface agent. The focus was on assessing subjective differences in agent perception between proactive and reactive conditions. Participants of the study were assisted by an interactive agent during seven tasks in a simulation controlling a nuclear power plant. In the reactive condition users had to activate the agent manually in case they needed help. In the proactive condition the agent offered help at a well defined time in the interaction process. Namely when users had confirmed that they were done reading the current task description. The complexity of the simulation ensured that solving the tasks without consulting the agent was virtually impossible. While both conditions performed similarly on objective performance criteria, the reactive agent was perceived more positively than the proactive agent. Especially the reactive agent was rated to be less distracting and less dominant.