The Visual Design and Implementation of an Embodied Conversational Agent in a Shared Decision-Making Context (eCoach)

Robertson, Scott; Solomon, Rob; Riedl, Mark O.; Gillespie, Theresa W.; Chociemski, Toni; Master, Viraj; Mohan, Arun

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20609-7_40

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The most reasonable explanation for these results seems to be the type of application, since Ring et al [5] and also van Wissen et al [22] showed that realistic agents are more appropriate for medical tasks. In line with this, Robertson et al [37] found that people even stated that they get angry about the use of cartoon-stylized agents in medical applications, since it somehow stultifies a very serious task. In our studies, the task itself was not explicitly defined, but participants were asked to imagine the agents as their own personal assistant in everyday life.…”

Section: Effects Of Realism (Rq2)mentioning

confidence: 92%

A Two-Study Approach to Explore the Effect of User Characteristics on Users’ Perception and Evaluation of a Virtual Assistant’s Appearance

Straßmann

Krämer

2018

MTI

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This research investigates the effect of different user characteristics on the perception and evaluation of an agent's appearance variables. Therefore, two different experiments have been conducted. In a 3 × 3 × 5 within-subjects design (Study 1; N = 59), three different target groups (students, elderly, and cognitively impaired people) evaluated 30 different agent appearances that varied in species (human, animal, and robot) and realism (high detail, low detail, stylized shades, stylized proportion, and stylized shade with stylized proportion). Study 2 (N = 792) focused on the effect of moderating variables regarding the same appearance variables and aims to supplement findings of Study 1 based on a 3 × 5 between-subjects design. Results showed effects of species and realism on person perception, users' liking, and using intention. In a direct comparison, a higher degree of realism was perceived as more positive, while those effects were not replicated in Study 2. Further on, a majority evaluated nonhumanoid agents more positively. Since no interaction effects of species and realism have been found, the effects of stylization seem to equally influence the perception for all kind of species. Moreover, the importance of the target group's preference was demonstrated, since differences with regard to the appearance evaluation were found.

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Section: Effects Of Realism (Rq2)mentioning

confidence: 92%

A Two-Study Approach to Explore the Effect of User Characteristics on Users’ Perception and Evaluation of a Virtual Assistant’s Appearance

Straßmann

Krämer

2018

MTI

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“…ECAs are increasingly employed in healthcare settings (e.g., [17,19,33]) across a number of specialisms, such as healthy eating [9], guiding treatment choices [30], and post-traumatic stress [34]. Moreover, ECAs are shown to be effective at changing patient behaviour (e.g., [6,8,15,21]).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing an Adaptive Embodied Conversational Agent for Health Literacy

Egede

Trigo

Hazzard

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 21th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

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Access to healthcare advice is crucial to promote healthy societies. Many factors shape how access might be constrained, such as economic status, education or, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, remote consultations with health practitioners. Our work focuses on providing pre/post-natal advice to maternal women. A salient factor of our work concerns the design and deployment of embodied conversation agents (ECAs) which can sense the (health) literacy of users and adapt to scaffold user engagement in this setting. We present an account of a Wizard of Oz user study of 'ALTCAI', an ECA with three modes of interaction (i.e., adaptive speech and text, adaptive ECA, and non-adaptive ECA). We compare reported engagement with these modes from 44 maternal women who have differing levels of literacy. The study shows that a combination of embodiment and adaptivity scaffolds reported engagement, but matters of health-literacy and language introduce nuanced considerations for the design of ECAs. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → User studies; Natural language interfaces; Empirical studies in HCI.

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“…Previously, ECAs have been implemented within the health context for a variety of contexts, such as health education, 2 mental disorders, 3 or as a decision aid for shared decision making in healthcare. 4 Using an ECA to convey information, to offer an intervention, or to support decision making has been found to sort different effects. A review by Provoost and colleagues 5 found that ECAs can increase user engagement and involvement, and can strengthen the effect of an offline intervention that is provided alongside the ECA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing appreciation and persuasion of embodied conversational agents for health behavior change: A design experiment and focus group study

Kramer,

van Velsen,

Mulder

et al. 2023

Health Informatics J

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Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) can increase user engagement and involvement and can strengthen the effect of an intervention on health outcomes that is provided via an ECA. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of ECAs on health outcomes is still limited. In this article, we report on a study that has the goal to identify the effect of a match between a health topic and the ECAs’ appearance on ratings of personality characteristics, persuasiveness and intention to use. We report on an online experiment with three different ECAs and three different health topics, conducted among 732 older adults. We triangulated the quantitative results with qualitative insights from a focus group. The results reveal that older adults prefer an ECA that has an appearance matching a certain health topic, resulting in higher ratings on persuasiveness and intention to use. Personality characteristics should be measured embedded within a health topic, but are not rated higher because of a match. We furthermore provide guidelines for designing the content of the ECA.

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The Visual Design and Implementation of an Embodied Conversational Agent in a Shared Decision-Making Context (eCoach)

Cited by 17 publications

References 13 publications

A Two-Study Approach to Explore the Effect of User Characteristics on Users’ Perception and Evaluation of a Virtual Assistant’s Appearance

A Two-Study Approach to Explore the Effect of User Characteristics on Users’ Perception and Evaluation of a Virtual Assistant’s Appearance

Designing an Adaptive Embodied Conversational Agent for Health Literacy

Optimizing appreciation and persuasion of embodied conversational agents for health behavior change: A design experiment and focus group study

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