Sunnyvale USA 2007-03-22 Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Socializing and refreshments: 7-7:30 pm Program: 7:30-9:30 pm Place: Yahoo!, Sunnyvale Some years ago, Paul Dourish introduced the concept of embodiment, which describes the distance between bytes and atoms. Leandro Agrò will speak about how an Italian company is working to reduce this distance, by creating emotional virtual agents to move bytes toward atoms on one side, while moving atoms toward bytes, Second Life's human users, on the other. :: Leandro Agrò has more than 10 years of experience as an interaction designer and manager of IxD teams. With extensive experience in multimodal interfaces based on eyetracking, he recently was seduced by the potential of virtual assistants with human-like behaviors. Leandro studied interaction design at the Domus Academy, in Milan, Italy—working on the '97 Apple Design Project. He is actively involved with the Milano Bicocca University, TorVergata University, Siena University, and others. Leandro is a prolific writer on topics from IxD, usability, and UX to natural, multimodal user interfaces. He is the founder of Idearium.org, the first Italian eZine/community for UX designers and co-producer of the Interaction Frontiers conference. For more information, see Leandro's blog, leeander.com. Co-sponsors of this event: * IxDA (Interaction Design Association) Silicon Valley Face to Face * BayCHI IxD BOF 179 CA A presentation about emotional virtual agents by Leandro Agrò. 2007-03-21 false http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20070321a/ http://events.boxesandarrows.com/events/179 ixd, virtual