Development and application of Manga-style chat system aiming to communicate nonverbal expression

Abstract

In this research, we propose a chat system that makes it easy to convey nonverbal information by adopting the Japanese Manga style. Characters in the chat systems play roles as agents of users to express the users' emotional states. However, even if whatever the characters have faces and aspects, users are required to select the appropriate emotion of the character not to give an unexpected impression from the illustrations. It is very troublesome for users to choose manually various emotions at each message during their chat. So we focus on the the Japanese Manga style and make an attempt to reduce users' burdens. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.