Towards interactive explanation-based nutrition virtual coaching systems

The awareness about healthy lifestyles is increasing, opening to personalized intelligent health coaching applications. A demand for more than mere suggestions and mechanistic interactions has driven attention to nutrition virtual coaching systems (NVC) as a bridge between human–machine interaction and recommender, informative, persuasive,...

Dyadic Physical Activity Planning with a Virtual Coach: Using Reinforcement Learning to Select Persuasive Strategies

Physical activity is one of the main factors that contribute to reducing the chance of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression, all while improving an individual’s health in general. While this is the case, the fact still remains that many adults across the world do not reach the minimum recommendations for...

Using Reinforcement Learning to Personalize Daily Step Goals for a Collaborative Dialogue with a Virtual Coach

To reduce morbidity and mortality caused by multiple chronic conditions, the number of steps people take each day should be gradually increased. For this, a recommended step goal can be created that is based on an individual's previous walking behaviour. However, for a person, the achievability of this recommended goal can change daily because...

Perfect Fit: Identiteitsgebaseerde virtuele coach die ondersteunt bij stoppen met roken en meer bewegen - Ontwikkeling en geleerde lessen

Reasons to continue or stop using a virtual coach for quitting smoking and increasing physical activity: A mixed-methods analysis

The increase in health problems due to smoking or lack of physical activity has created the incentive to develop a virtual coach to help people with smoking cessation and increase physical activity. In this study, a mixed-methods analysis (thematic analysis, quantitative analysis, and a literature study) was carried out to find out what the...

Acceptance of a Virtual Coach as Guided Intervention for Smoking Cessation: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

As guided interventions are seen as more effective compared to unguided interventions and because the use of eHealth applications is rising over the years, the need to study the effects of a virtual coach as a substitute for guided interventions was created. A virtual coach does not cost as much time and money as a real coach and would thus be...

Acceptance of a virtual coach for quitting smoking and becoming more physically active: A thematic analysis: Traits for a virtual coach to be a ”friend”

Seeing the virtual coach as a friend is beneficial as it increases the motivation, confidence, and perseverance of the accompanying. Here, an investigation has taken place to what characteristics the virtual coach must possess to establish this friendly relationship. Thus, the main research question is: What are the reasons for seeing the...

Reasons to Be Satisfied or Dissatisfied With a Virtual Coach for Quitting Smoking and Becoming More Physically Active: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

A virtual coach, Sam, was created by the Perfect Fit project to aid users in establishing a foundation to stop smoking via the means of making them more physically active. Data from 500 users had been collected from them during stages which start with a pre-screening phase until a post-questionnaire phase. In the latter stage, they provided a...

Goal-setting dialogue for physical activity with a virtual coach

Lack of physical activity is one of the main risk factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases. Although most people are aware of the risks of this poor health behavior, they have a hard time improving this behavior. Goal-setting is an effective step in the process of changing behavior. It can motivate a person and help them to remain...

Reusable Virtual Coach for Smoking Cessation and Physical Activity Coaching

Smoking tobacco and physical inactivity are key preventable behavioural risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Computerised coaching systems can help individuals to modify risky behaviours, thereby preventing CVD. However, most reported eHealth or computerized coaching systems are hard to reuse in slightly different settings. To provide...

Users’ needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study

Background<br/>Despite their increasing prevalence and potential, eHealth applications for behavior change suffer from a lack of adherence and from dropout. Advances in virtual coach technology provide new opportunities to improve this. However, these applications still do not always offer what people need. We, therefore, need a better...

Using a Virtual Coach to Quit Smoking: 14 Themes for User Needs

Adaptive Data-Driven Persuasive Communication for a Conversational Agent to Support Behavior Change

A human therapist continuously adapts how they persuade a client to adhere to a behavior change intervention based on theoretical expertise, past experience with the client as well as other clients, and the client's current situation. We aim at incorporating these elements into the persuasive communication of a conversational agent that acts as...

Perfect Fit: een identiteitsgebaseerde virtuele coach die ondersteunt bij stoppen met roken en meer bewegen

Duurzame gedragsverandering is moeilijk, zelfs wanneer het huidige gedrag een groot risico vormt voor de gezondheid. Gedragsverandering wordt gemakkelijker als het nieuwe gedrag past bij hoe een individu zichzelf ziet (identiteit). Virtuele coaching is veelbelovend om gedrags- en identiteitsverandering te ondersteunen, omdat het altijd...

Virtual Coaches for Older Adults' Wellbeing: A Systematic Review

Virtual Coaches, also known as e-coaches, are a disruptive technology in healthcare. Indeed, among other usages, they might provide cost-effective solutions for increasing human wellbeing in different domains, such as physical, nutritional, cognitive, social, and emotional. This paper presents a systematic review of virtual coaches...

Computer-Based Social Anxiety Regulation in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

Social anxiety disorder (SAD), commonly referred to social phobia, is one of the most an immense and unreasonable fear of social interaction. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is the most thoroughly studied nonpharmacologic approach to the treatment of SAD patients. In CBT, patients are gradually, in <i>vivo</i>, exposed to anxiety-provoking...

Talk and Tools: The best of both worlds in mobile user interfaces for E-coaching

In this paper, a user interface paradigm, called Talk-and-Tools, is presented for automated e-coaching. The paradigm is based on the idea that people interact in two ways with their environment: symbolically and physically. The main goal is to show how the paradigm can be applied in the design of interactive systems that offer an acceptable...