Health Behavior Change Support Systems (HBCSS)
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ItemTowards Designing a Mobile Stress Coping Assistant( 2022-01-04)Stress is a major public health concern and a severe threat to everyone. Facilitated by their powerful sensing capabilities, mobile devices may assist individuals in coping with stress. Building on existing studies and mobile apps supporting stress coping, we propose the design of a mobile coping assistant that uses multimodal sensor data to reduce its user’s stress. Based on sensor data, a mobile coping assistant (1) warns the user about elevated stress, (2) delivers a fundamental understanding of why they are currently stressed, (3) recommends targeted coping strategies to encourage and train effective coping behavior, and (4) executes automated actions to reduce stress exposure. The presented design comprises an architecture, good practices for designing the architectural components, and an algorithm for selecting adequate coping actions and recommendations. A prototypical instantiation indicates opportunities and challenges. Future research should evaluate the short- and long-term effectiveness of mobile coping assistants in the field.
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ItemThe Virtual Doctor Is In: The Effect of Telehealth Visits on Patient Experience( 2022-01-04)COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of telehealth. With this shift comes a need for empirically based research regarding the effect of telehealth on patient experience. The present study employed an online survey (N = 996) examining whether a patient's perceptions of a telehealth visit predict the likelihood that they will schedule a future telehealth visit, and their recall of clinical information. Participants viewed a video of a real clinician delivering information on a COVID-19 antibody test, and responded to demographic, socioemotional, and cognitive items. We found that individuals who were extremely satisfied with their interaction with the doctor, for every 1-point increase in satisfaction, they were 72.5% times more likely to revisit the doctor (p < .01). These results also provide insight to researchers and medical professionals regarding patient perceptions of virtual encounters and suggest best practices to consider as we further integrate telehealth.
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ItemPeer Buddy or Expert? – On the Avatar Design of a Virtual Coach for Obesity Patients( 2022-01-04)Morbid obesity in association with comorbidities is a considerable burden for the healthcare systems worldwide. Long-term weight loss maintenance requires sustainable behavioral changes but poor adherence is a significant problem in obesity care today and patients often relapse. Prior research has found conversational agents with of a humanoid representation (avatar) embodying the role of a virtual coach useful for the interface of health behavior change support systems. Regarding the avatar design, the coach could, e.g., take the role of an obese “peer buddy” or a lean “expert”. Based on requirements and design principles derived from the literature, the present study investigates how the avatar should be designed. Therefore, two patient surveys were conducted to evaluate static and dynamic representations of potential coaches. The results suggest that patients welcome the concept and lean “expert” coaches might be more suitable in an obesity context. Design implications for future research are derived and discussed.
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ItemDesigning Personally Relevant Avatars for Digital Health Interventions: The Biocultural Perspective of Presence( 2022-01-04)Digital health interventions (DHIs) show great promise in empowering patients to take positive action toward their self-care by helping them with chronic disease self-management efforts. However, problematic user engagement with DHIs is a key issue preventing the full realization of DHI benefits. DHI design issues, such as lack of personal relevance, can negatively impact user engagement and consequently prevent patients from entering the empowerment process. The literature recognizes that avatars can be used to assimilate a self-concept during human-computer interaction and enhance personal relevance through self-presence. Yet, little is known about designing avatars to achieve self-presence in the context of digital health. This paper reports the results of a design science research study that explores key design elements that can facilitate a personal connection between users and technology by inducing self-presence through avatars. This study has implications for the theory-driven design of DHI to engage users with chronic conditions.
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