This paper presents a qualitative study conducted to explore perceptions, attitudes and expectations for a virtual assistive companion designed to supplement human caregiving and facilitate an improved quality of life and long-term health benefits for older adults. The study was conducted adopting a human-centred approach; employing focus groups and individual interviews with older adults, professional caregivers and psychologists specialized in the aging process. Results indicated that users were in favour of a virtual companion and highlighted its potential to assist the accomplishment of daily activities and make more efficient use of human care services. Humanlike communication and behaviour were desirable whereas mixed opinions were expressed about humanlike appearance. The ramifications of the study are discussed in the form of design implications for the development of a virtual assistive companion that possesses the appropriate "social skills" to establish and maintain comfortable and acceptable longterm interaction and offers "useful" support to older adults. Categories and Subject Descriptors General TermsDesign, Human Factors, Measurement. KeywordsHuman-centred design, older users, qualitative field study, health promotion, personalization, HCI. INTRODUCTION 1.The increasing demand for healthcare and quality of life services to support the aging population has inspired researchers worldwide to explore the applicability of new intelligent technologies to support older adults to cope with the challenges of aging, live more independently and make more efficient use of care services. While human caregiving cannot and will not be replaced, assistive technologies have the potential to supplement human caregiving and to improve the quality of life for both older adults and their caregivers [25]. A range of computer-based techniques has been used in the design of advanced assistive technologies focused on "aging in place"; that is to enable older adults to remain in their homes for longer periods and help those who are in assisted living care facilities to maintain more independence there. Virtual computer-animated characters, also known as Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) [12], have attracted a lot of attention over the past years and have been successfully used in health interventions, including several designed specifically for older users [2,8,26,30]. ECAs move beyond the paradigm of computer as a tool and allow for multimodal interaction reflecting natural human-to-human communication. Recent research has shown that ECAs expressing empathetic emotions have the potential to enhance user's satisfaction, engagement [18] and performance in task achievement [23].In the scope of the European project CaMeLi [10], we investigate the use of ECAs as long-term assistive companions for older adults (aged 65 and above). In this context, we define a successful "virtual assistive companion" as an agent that is seamlessly integrated into the living environment and follows the daily life patterns of its use...

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