Abstract— Talking-head animation is an instructional approach that helps students in linguistic learning, especially in the pronunciation aspect. However, the use of talking-head animation has caused some emotional uneasiness among students when the design and realistic level of the animated characters are too human-like. This phenomenon is known as ‘Uncanny Valley’ and was corroborated through a research by a Japanese robotics expert named Masahiro Mori in 1970, who had also produced a graph explaining this phenomenon. To overcome these problems, the non-realistic three-dimensional talking-head animation has been developed to ensure that students get the maximum learning from the point of emotional and learning performance. On this regard, the focus of this study was mainly on developing non-realistic three-dimensional talking-head animation. The courseware was developed based on theories, principles and literature overview conducted. The paper also reports the outcome of usability and user satisfaction (PSSUQ) test carried out.

Index Terms— Animation, emotion, instructional, realism, talking-head.

Mohd Najib Hamdan, Ahmad Zamzuri Mohamad Ali are with Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Tanjong Malim, Perak, Malaysia. Tel.:+60162035863; email: najib_kp@yahoo.com

Cite: Mohd Najib Hamdan, Ahmad Zamzuri Mohamad Ali, " User Satisfaction of Non-Realistic Three-Dimensional Talking-Head Animation Courseware (3D-NR)," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 23-30, 2015.