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International Conference on Persuasive Technology

PERSUASIVE 2016: Persuasive Technology pp 263–275Cite as

Developing a Virtual Coach for Chronic Patients: A User Study on the Impact of Similarity, Familiarity and Realism

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9638))

Abstract

Healthcare costs are increasing dramatically due to disproportional consumption of healthcare resources by chronic patients. Automated forms of health coaching can contribute to improved patient self-management while reducing costs due to increased scalability and availability of the use of human health coaches. Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) seem to be good candidates to function as automated coaches, as they introduce a social component to human-computer interactions which makes them particularly suitable to influence a user’s attitude or behavior. To date, there is limited knowledge on the impact of appearance-related characteristics of an ECA as a virtual coach among a chronically ill elderly population. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the impact of three appearance cues on user acceptance: (i) similarity; (ii) familiarity; and (iii) realism. Findings demonstrate that patients (a) preferred the realistic-looking ECA over the more stylized one; (b) showed no preference for the familiar over the unfamiliar ECAs (but did evaluate the unfamiliar ECAs as more positive than the familiar one); and (c) evaluated an ECA as virtual coach for self-management support as useful.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philips Research, High Tech Campus 34, 5656 AE, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Arlette van Wissen, Charlotte Vinkers & Aart van Halteren

Authors
  1. Arlette van Wissen
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  2. Charlotte Vinkers
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  3. Aart van Halteren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arlette van Wissen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Alexander Meschtscherjakov

  2. Philips Research, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Boris De Ruyter

  3. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Verena Fuchsberger

  4. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Martin Murer

  5. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Manfred Tscheligi

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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van Wissen, A., Vinkers, C., van Halteren, A. (2016). Developing a Virtual Coach for Chronic Patients: A User Study on the Impact of Similarity, Familiarity and Realism. In: Meschtscherjakov, A., De Ruyter, B., Fuchsberger, V., Murer, M., Tscheligi, M. (eds) Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9638. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_23

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31509-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31510-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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