(Last updated December 2019)

New End User Avatars in the A2J Viewer

A2J Author is proud to announce the addition of six new end user avatars. We’ve also updated the way that end users are asked to pick their avatars. They are now shown all eight avatar options with five skin tone options and eight hair color options. As the end user makes their hair and skin tone selections, the eight avatars are updated in real time. 

The "3-Avatar" question now replaces the default "3-Gender" question in new A2J Guided Interviews (one of four default questions that come preloaded in a blank A2J Guided Interview). The new avatar picker requires the use of the variable User Avatar. We have created a 15th field type called User Avatar to enable existing interviews to use the new avatar picker. 

Authors wishing to add the new avatar picker to their interviews can either change the User Gender question to use the User Avatar field and the User Avatar text variable or they can add a new User Avatar field and the corresponding User Avatar variable to a new question. Both the User Gender variable and the User Avatar variable can co-exist in the same A2J Guided Interview. This allows authors to gather both the user’s gender that may be required for the form or reporting purposes and give the end user the freedom to choose any avatar that they want to represent themselves. If both the Gender question and the new avatar picker are in the same interview, the avatar picked by the user supersedes the gender selection in displaying the avatar only. It doesn’t change the underlying answer to the User Gender question. (For example, if the end user selects “Male” for the “What is your gender?” question and then chooses a female presenting avatar in the User Avatar field, that female presenting avatar will display, but the input of “Male” will be stored in the answer file for the User Gender variable.)

The new User Avatar field is not a required input. End users can skip the question and have no avatar displayed. If the end user runs the A2J Guided Interview on a mobile device, that User Avatar question is displayed as “User Avatar selection not supported in Mobile Viewer.”

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to A2J Author’s Project Manager, Jessica Frank, at Jessica@cali.org.