video/talking avatars - some opinions please ...#

Hi all

I may be required to produce a video avatar for a site and am canvassing for opinions on use of this sort of thing. Making it won’t be a problem – it’ll poss be a person speaking in video format, with transparent background so it can be positioned anywhere on the page. I can easily produce this in Flash (or other formats within html 5 with fallbacks etc). The video will be designed to give important info about the site and service.

However, I have serious reservations about this whole idea from many angles. Personally I don’t like this sort of thing but that is totally subjective - for the record, I just don’t like someone/something talking to me on a webpage, unless I request it. Just bugs me that's all.

But also because I know that there are some serious usability ramifications with flash type avatars which I have outlined, not least for users with sight/hearing issues, but also with flash player issues etc. I have outlined that if video is used then for usability/fallback that the site itself has to be well structured so that pertinent info is easily available - all pretty standard stuff.

Does anyone have any opinions or just general thoughts about talking/video avatars? or even a link to some research? I’ve googled a few times but am not getting back much of use (well not to satisfy my possibly biased viewpoint ).

Thanks in advance

If you are not to keen on the idea, perhaps proposing an alternate strategy would be the way to go.
To me it's the kind of thing that's a novelty, so as something that's a site intro, or occasional use thing it's better than if it's a mandatory feature. Maybe a good screencast would be preferred, I guess is my own personal opinion, say for a site tour or something.
I wouldn't steer a client away from this if it's something they've got the mind set on, could be fun.

just my 2 cents:

I do not like talking heads on my web pages

But if the client wants it...

Only you can judge whether it is worth talking them out of it and just maybe they know their clients and their clients are not me!

I was surprised there wasn't much research about this kind of thing either. Surely it's up there with flash intros/welcome pages and background music as irritating web gimmicks? If you end up doing any A/B testing on that please do post the results here!

As Crssp said, a screencast may be the way to go and seems to be the preference of 37signals, Mailchimp, Google and the majority of those clued-up web companies with big testing budgets.

If you have to run with it, please insist that the avatar not auto-play. Nothing worse than opening a website and have some cheesy music or speech blasting out of your speakers for everyone in the office to hear...

Thanks for the replies guys.

I totally agree with the screencast angle and think I've won ground there. Also @lucas, I always insisted on a non-autoplay for whatever goes onto the page, totally agree with you there - that sort of thing drives me nuts and I got that message across.

The only problem now is actually getting the project populated and moving as the whole approach has been reconsidered. I found the lack of proper research a bit of a drag as the client could have referred to something so I could back up my opinions, such is life sometimes.

Jacob Neilsen had a bit on avatars but it's partly game based and rather 'dry' let's say.

Maybe someone can up on that ?