Multimodal Intercultural Information and Communication Technology - A Framework for Designing and Evaluating Multimodal Intercultural Communicators

Abstract : The paper presents a framework, combined with a checklist for designing and evaluating multimodal, intercultural ICT, especially when embodied artificial communicators are used as front ends for data bases, as digital assistants, as tutors in pedagogical programs or players in games etc. Such a framework is of increasing interest, since the use of ICT across cultural boundaries in combination with the use of ICT by persons with low literacy skills is rapidly increasing. This development presents new challenges for intercultural ICT. A desideratum for interculturally sensitive artificial communicators is a generic, exportable system for interactive communication with a number of parameters that can be set to capture intercultural variation in communication. This means a system for a Generic, Multimodal, Intercultural Communicator (a GMIC).