Uncanny as Usability Obstacle

The eerie feeling attributed to photo-realistic human-like video game characters may serve as a usability obstacle leaving viewers dissatisfied with a particular character for a video game. This study investigates the relationships between user satisfaction and perceived strangeness and between user satisfaction and human-like appearance for virtual characters. 65 participants were asked to rate 13 video clips of 12 different virtual characters and one real human. The results indicate that the Uncanny Valley does serve as a usability obstacle with a strong correlation between a user’s satisfaction rating and the perceived strangeness for a character, with the characters rated the strangest being the least satisfactory. Whilst there was still a positive correlation between human-like appearance for a character with user satisfaction, this was not as significant, with stylised and anthropomorphic characters perceived to be as satisfactory or more so than those of a photo-realistic human-like appearance.