To Animate Or Anime-Te? Investigating Sign Avatar Comprehensibility

In this study, we investigated the effect of avatar design on the perception of sign language animation display. Signed sentence expressions were comparatively evaluated using a natural and an anime-style avatar model of three different clothing colors and patterns to determine each design parameter's influence on comprehensibility, naturalness and user affinity. Results show that plain settled color clothing was perceived as most favorable, and that the natural avatar was clearly preferred over the anime-style avatar as an informant of the signed sentence content.