The Impact of Vocal Communication and its Personalization on Intention to Use of Chatbots Using Behavioral Activation to Support Patients Experiencing Depression

The 21st century has seen a significant increase in the global prevalence of mental health problems, affecting almost a billion people. These conditions not only reduce the quality of life for individuals but also lead to stigmatization, discrimination, and social isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated mental health issues,...

Reducing social diabetes distress with a conversational agent support system: A three-week technology feasibility evaluation

Background: People with diabetes mellitus not only have to deal with physical health problems, but also with the psycho-social challenges their chronic disease brings. Currently, technological tools that support the psycho-social context of a patient have received little attention.<br/><br/>Objective: The objective of this work is to determine...

A Conversational Agent for Stress First Aid: Mental Well-being Awareness for Police Officers

Police officers are exposed to many potentially traumatising and stressful situations, but they do not always find the right mental health help they need. In this thesis, conversational agent Robyn is developed to help officers keep an eye on their mental well-being and find help when needed. An evaluation approach is also presented. The...

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 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...

Misalignment in Semantic User Model Elicitation via Conversational Agents: A Case Study in Navigation Support for Visually Impaired People

Disabled people can benefit greatly from assistive digital technologies. However, this increased human-machine symbiosis makes it important that systems are personalized and transparent to users. Existing work often uses data-oriented approaches. However, these approaches lack transparency and make it hard to influence the system’s behavior. In...

AI Alignment Dialogues: An Interactive Approach to AI Alignment in Support Agents

This project proposes a different way of looking at AI alignment, namely by introducing AI Alignment Dialogues. We argue that alignment dialogues have a number of advantages in comparison to data-driven approaches, especially for behaviour support agents, which aim to support users in achieving their desired future behaviours rather than...

Schema mode assessment through a conversational agent

Schema therapy is a psychotherapy for treatment of personality disorders and other psychological disorders. An important element of schema therapy is determining a patient's schema modes, a concept central to deciding the treatment approach. The objective of this work was to evaluate whether assessment of these schema modes is possible through a...

Social relations and diabetes: Creating a support system for people with diabetes

People with diabetes often show symptoms heavily associated with depression, but these symptoms are often caused by the burden of daily diabetes management. The negative feelings caused by this burden are defined as "diabetes burnout''. Some of these negative feelings are caused by social issues. People with diabetes often resort to online...

LIVEsense: A Continuous and Collaborative Goal Setting System using Sensor Data for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) Patients

This report is the result of a master thesis project that finalizes 2 years of Strategic Product Design master program at the Industrial Design Engineering faculty. The project is about designing a data-informed clinical care process for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) patient. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) is a...

Design and Evaluation of a Conversational Agent Model based on Stance and BDI providing Situated Learning for Triage-Psychologists in the Helpline of 113 Suicide Prevention

Objective: This thesis aided the 113 Suicide Prevention (113), the national suicide prevention center for The Netherlands, by investigating technical solutions for the helpline, implementing an e-learning prototype housing six suicidal personas within a conversational agent model, and evaluating and analyzing an experiment on its effect, which...

Socio-Cognitive Engineering of a Robotic Partner for Child's Diabetes Self-Management

Social or humanoid robots do hardly show up in “the wild,” aiming at pervasive and enduring human benefits such as child health. This paper presents a socio-cognitive engineering (SCE) methodology that guides the ongoing research &amp; development for an evolving, longer-lasting human-robot partnership in practice. The SCE methodology has been...

How should a virtual agent present psychoeducation?: Influence of verbal and textual presentation on adherence

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:<br/>With the rise of autonomous e-mental health applications, virtual agents can play a major role in improving trustworthiness, therapy outcome and adherence. In these applications, it is important that patients adhere in the sense that they perform the tasks, but also that they adhere to the specific recommendations...