While avatars have grown in popularity in social settings, their use in the workplace is still debatable. We conducted a large-scale survey to evaluate knowledge worker sentiment towards avatars, particularly the effects of realism on their acceptability for work meetings. Our survey of 2509 knowledge workers from multiple countries rated five avatar styles for use by managers, known colleagues and unknown colleagues. In all scenarios, participants favored higher realism, but fully realistic avatars were sometimes perceived as uncanny. Less realistic avatars were rated worse when interacting with an unknown colleague or manager, as compared to a known colleague. Avatar acceptability varied by country, with participants from the United States and South Korea rating avatars more favorably. We supplemented our quantitative findings with a thematic analysis of open-ended responses to provide a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing work avatar choices. In conclusion, our results show that realism had a significant positive correlation with acceptability. Non-realistic avatars were seen as fun and playful, but only suitable for occasional use.

翻译：尽管头像在社交场合日益流行，其在职场中的使用仍存在争议。我们开展了一项大规模调查，以评估知识型员工对头像的态度，特别是真实感对其在工作会议中可接受程度的影响。我们对来自多个国家的2509名知识型员工进行了调查，评估了管理者、已知同事和未知同事使用的五种头像风格。在所有场景中，参与者更偏好真实感较高的头像，但完全真实的头像有时会被视为诡异。与已知同事互动相比，参与者对与未知同事或管理者互动时使用的较低真实感头像评价更差。头像的可接受性因国家而异，来自美国和韩国的参与者对头像评价更高。我们通过开放式回答的主题分析补充了定量研究结果，以全面理解影响工作头像选择的因素。结论显示，真实感与可接受性呈显著正相关。非真实感头像被认为有趣好玩，但仅适合偶尔使用。