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An Embodied Conversational Agent to Support Wellbeing After Injury: Insights from a Stakeholder Inclusive Design Approach

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Persuasive Technology (PERSUASIVE 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14636))

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Abstract

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are increasingly being included in digital health and wellbeing programs. Whilst initial evaluations of ECAs in this field have been promising, there has been a lack of detail as to how stakeholders and end users have been included in the design process. Stakeholder inclusion has been acknowledged as essential to ensure that ECAs meet expectations, maximize engagement and facilitate behavior change. This study describes an iterative coproduction process used to develop an emotion regulation intervention conversational agent (ERICA) to support people following injury. The coproduction process followed an accelerated creation approach with 13 qualitative interviews being conducted with people who had a lived experience of recovering from injury/adversity. Interviews were completed with the goal to understand barriers and facilitators to engagement, user experience and to identify opportunities for program improvement. Four broad themes emerged from the data: visual look, voice, content and experience. A key finding from this study was a high level of stakeholder apprehension of generative AI and the need for ECA designers to make explicit the specific technology and functions being used within programs. Findings highlight the value of timely stakeholder inclusion in digital intervention design, particularly when knowledge and expectations of generative technology is rapidly changing.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Meredith Porte for technical assistance and to all participants involved in the study.

Funding

This project is supported by Digital Health CRC Limited (“DHCRC”). DHCRC is funded under the Australian Commonwealth’s Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Macquarie University, 4 Research Park Drive, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Katherine Hopman & Deborah Richards

  2. Centre for Emotional Health, Australian Hearing Hub, Level 1, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Melissa N. Norberg

Authors
  1. Katherine Hopman
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  2. Deborah Richards
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  3. Melissa N. Norberg
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katherine Hopman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

    Nilufar Baghaei

  2. Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

    Raian Ali

  3. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Khin Win

  4. York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Kiemute Oyibo

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Hopman, K., Richards, D., Norberg, M.N. (2024). An Embodied Conversational Agent to Support Wellbeing After Injury: Insights from a Stakeholder Inclusive Design Approach. In: Baghaei, N., Ali, R., Win, K., Oyibo, K. (eds) Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14636. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58226-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58226-4_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-58225-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-58226-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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