The development of embodied conversational agents (ECA) as companions brings several challenges for both affective and conversational dialogue. These include challenges in generating appropriate affective responses, selecting the overall shape of the dialogue, providing prompt system response times, and handling interruptions. We present an implementation of such a companion showing the development of individual modules that attempt to address these challenges. Further, to resolve resulting conflicts, we present encompassing interaction strategies that attempt to balance the competing requirements along with dialogues from our working prototype to illustrate these interaction strategies in operation. Finally, we provide the results of an evaluation of the companion using an evaluation methodology created for conversational dialogue and including analysis using appropriateness annotation.

This paper describes the design, application, and refinement of a qualitative tool designed to study sense of place. The Place Probe incorporates a range of stimuli and techniques aimed at articulating a person's sense of place. It has been developed, used, and undergone three revisions. The paper describes the background to the choice of measures that were included in the Place Probe and describes its application in both a physical place and a virtual representation of that place. This enables a comparison of the experiences. An analysis of the results reveals a similarity of reported experience, however the extremes experienced in the physical place were less pronounced in the virtual representation. The Place Probe has been refined in light of the results of the empirical work and now incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data on the experience of place.