What's Up With These Conversational Health Agents? From Users' Critiques to Implications for Design

Raju Maharjan, Kevin Doherty, Darius Adam Rohani, Per Bækgaard, Jakob E. Bardram
2022 Frontiers in Digital Health  
Recent advancements in speech recognition technology in combination with increased access to smart speaker devices are expanding conversational interactions to ever-new areas of our lives – including our health and wellbeing. Prior human-computer interaction research suggests that Conversational Agents (CAs) have the potential to support a variety of health-related outcomes, due in part to their intuitive and engaging nature. Realizing this potential requires however developing a rich
more » ... ing of users' needs and experiences in relation to these still-emerging technologies. To inform the design of CAs for health and wellbeing, we analyze 2741 critical reviews of 485 Alexa health and fitness Skills using an automated topic modeling approach; identifying 15 subjects of criticism across four key areas of design (functionality, reliability, usability, pleasurability). Based on these findings, we discuss implications for the design of engaging CAs to support health and wellbeing.
doi:10.3389/fdgth.2022.840232 pmid:35465648 pmcid:PMC9021431 fatcat:hmzafl2adrdhfaxle2tsujk6aq