Looking at human–computer interface design: Effects of ethnicity in computer agents Jean A. Pratt a, * , Karina Hauser b , Zsolt Ugray b , Olga Patterson c a Information Systems, University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, 411 Schneider Hall, Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004, USA b Business Information Systems, Utah State University, 3515 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-3515, USA c GE Healthcare, 384 Wright Brothers Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, USA Received 30 June 2006; received in revised form 7 February 2007; accepted 21 February 2007 Available online 12 March 2007 Abstract This paper presents empirical research findings that identify demonstrated attitude changes in computer users associated with their receiving advice from personified computer agents of two different ethnicities: African American and European American. Our findings indicate that computer users are more likely to change their actions (demonstrating underlying attitudes) based on input from a computer agent whose ethnicity is similar to theirs. These findings directly impact computer agent design in many fields. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer agents; Ethnicity; Human–computer interface design; Personalisation 1. Introduction Increased use of Internet and intranet applications facil- itates communication and increases work productivity (Lit- an and Rivlin, 2001). Cross-discipline uses of these applications include the following: • to help formulate decisions for public policy and medicine; • to educate new employees on organisational structure or proprietary applications; • to guide employees in the acceptance of new technologies; • to market new products; • to troubleshoot end-user problems with software applications; • to improve communication among employees. One issue associated with increased computer use is that no single computer interface can provide a high quality inter- action for all users (Savidis and Stephanidis, 2004, 2006). Even within a given culture, the diversity of users precludes a single interface design. Therefore, the software application must enable individual interface personalisation. This per- sonalisation requires a complex software infrastructure that changes visible design components (such as a computer agent) by which end users interact with computers. The purpose of this empirical research was to assess changes in behaviour associated with computer-agent rec- ommendations when the personified agent and the subject were of either a similar or different ethnicity. Our contribu- tion to the field was to analyse (1) use of a ‘‘human’’ (rather than faceless, metallic) full-body computer agent in a value-ranking task; and (2) use of an extensive, 12-point character attribute list evaluating two ethnically different computer agents. 2. Background 2.1. Ethnicity and prejudice We adopted Crandall and Eshleman’s (2003) definition of prejudice for our study: ‘‘[Prejudice is] a negative 0953-5438/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2007.02.003 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 1715 836 3155, fax: +1 1715 836 4959. E-mail addresses: prattja@uwec.edu (J.A. Pratt), karina.hauser@ usu.edu (K. Hauser), zsolt.ugray@usu.edu (Z. Ugray), olga.patterson@ ge.com (O. Patterson). www.elsevier.com/locate/intcom Interacting with Computers 19 (2007) 512–523