Adding the finishing touches to both the literature review and research proposal. In the literature review, I drafted the implications section, wrote the abstract, added the references, and reviewed the overall formatting.

Due to travel and some personal matters, I took a month off and stepped away from the project. Now, with the academic quarter in full swing, I am gradually re-engaging and can only dedicate a few hours per week to the project. At this point, my primary goal is to complete the literature review and begin drafting my technical paper. As I am still in a holding pattern for IRB submission, I have decided to create a research proposal that will address many of the topics required for the IRB. I have organized the literature review around key theoretical themes that support the central concept. These themes include:

• Media Richness and Media Naturalness Theory
• Social Presence Theory and Psychological Distance Theory
• Anthropomorphism and Uncanny Valley Theory
• AI Device User Acceptance and Computers as Social Actors

I’ve made progress in revising and updating the study questionnaire to include the suggested outcomes, as well as refining the experimental protocol and script. However, I feel mentally exhausted from grappling with the narrative, the arguments, and the subtle connections between the constructs. While progress has been made, I’m still working on piecing the literature and theories together into a cohesive storyline.

This week’s time was spent mostly on literature reading and understanding the suggested theories. I notice that there are theories that are similar but I feel both can be true. For instance, Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Media Naturalness Theory (MNT), while MRT suggests that communication effectiveness is dependent the richness that the communication medium that promotes social cues allows, so text messaging allows less richness in comparison to voice telecommunication, in comparison to video conference, in comparison to face-to-face of which has the highest level of richness. Meanwhile MNT argues that it is not the matter of richness, but rather naturalness, how closely the communication environment mimics the natural in-person communication environment that the communication channel allows to create the degree of effectiveness. I find the two theories are essentially communicating the same phenomena, and the distinctions between the two are so small that it’s insignificant.

I received a lot of great feedback from my advisor on my experimental setup and all of the required documents for IRB submission. I feel we are making progress, but I am also realizing that there is more work and more revisions that need to be done. The suggested revisions fall into two categories: experimental design and the theories that we are testing/measuring. My advisor recommended that instead of the between-subject experiment design, we should consider a within-subject design. Given that this study has a small sample size of 20 subjects, this approach would help demonstrate that the difference is due to the two conditions rather than individual characteristics such as personality and communication style. Another suggested revision is to include other theories that I previously did not consider, such as TAM and UTAUT, the uncanny valley, and rapport building as one of the measurements.

This week, I had some downtime while awaiting feedback on my experimental protocol and IRB submission documents. I used this time to catch up on DREAM milestone tasks. I created my DREAM project website on GitHub and reviewed other students’ progress. I am incredibly impressed by their projects, which have truly inspired me to make the most of this opportunity. I feel fortunate for the introductions and connections I’ve made so far, meeting my advisor, other students in the research lab, and my mentor. These interactions have already made this experience worthwhile.

This week, I worked on visual assets for the AI experimental condition. I realized that to make the deception effective, a brief presentation on the key features and functionalities of the hypothetical AI interviewing software was necessary before the interview simulation. I created branding, a name, a brochure, and screen mockups for the fictitious AI interviewing software. To make it believable, I introduced the AI interviewing platform as a Zoom plug-in offering a hyper-realistic, user-friendly interviewing experience with feedback.

This week was heavily focused on writing, as I spent the majority of my time refining my experimental protocol for IRB submission. I also created the supplemental materials needed for the protocol, including simulated interview questions and their intended reasoning for use in the experiment, the experimental questionnaire, informed consent and debrief forms, and an experimental script to be spoken during the experiment. I particularly struggled with finding the right questionnaire items to include, realizing that an empirically validated instrument would be necessary for my experiment. Many validated scales are often not included in research papers, requiring more diligence in finding alternatives. This process also made me critically evaluate the key outcomes I would like to measure, whether they are trust, transparency, interview experience, social presence, or something else.

In week two, I drafted a second version of the experimental protocol and reviewed literature to find theories supporting my hypotheses. I began questioning my research based on my experience in corporate recruiting, where leadership pushed to implement HireVue’s on-demand video interview software. This technology aimed to expedite the process and support DE&I efforts by allowing candidates to record their responses at their convenience, potentially increasing the candidate pool. However, many candidates found the experience cold and one-sided, leading to low completion rates and unnatural responses. Recruiters also struggled with reminders and promoting the technology to hiring managers.

Prior to the first week, my advisor and I had already met a couple of times to brainstorm my research topics and my goals during and after the DREAM program. I expressed my interest in producing original work and ultimately working towards my first publication. I also communicated a few of my research topics, and we ultimately decided to investigate the use of Artificial Intelligence in video interview platforms and its effect on interviewees’ emotional and behavioral responses, as well as their performance.