Improving social support for teenagers with parental loss in secondary school environment

This research aims to explore the experiences and needs of social support after the teenager’s parental loss within the secondary school environment and proposes a design intervention. <br/><br/>Teenagers perceive grief more intensely compared to younger ages and adults since it aligns with the rapid transitions of their adolescence. In this...

Food for Talk: A conversation game for young adults with eating disorders and their social network

Eating disorders are a growing problem in the Netherlands. Eating disorders are most prevalent among young adults between 18 and 30 years old and, on average, go undiagnosed for four years. There is no single cause for eating disorders, and are often accompanied by other mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Because of the complexity,...

Roadmap for AI in a humane ICU

ICU is the place with the most advanced monitoring and support machines in a hospital. But surrounded by all these machines, ICU patients are also like machines instead of humans. Scientific advances have been proved to greatly improve the cure rate. Meanwhile, patients' well-being has been gradually treated as important as curing the disease...

D1Alemma: A tool for relatives to support diabetes type 1 patients

The goal of this graduation project, conducted for the master science communication at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), was to design a tool to help partners of diabetes type 1 patients to come closer to the patient, by conversations about diabetes, to gain more insights in how the patients feels and how to support. The project is...

Hospital to home: Design to prevent social loneliness among people with chronic heart failure

Home healthcare for chronic illness has emerged as a solution to the increasing demand for healthcare. Philips, as one of the leading companies in this field, is developing a people-centered, technology-empowered "Hospital to Home" ecosystem to improve people's well-being and enable people to live a healthy life at home as long as possible. With...

Ageing in a long-term regeneration neighbourhood: A disruptive experience or successful ageing in place? (discussion paper)

The aging population of European cities raises enormous challenges with regard to employment, pensions, health care and other age-related services. The housing preferences of the aging population are changing rapidly where more and more people want to live independent lives for as long as possible. At the same time governments need to reduce the...

An Empathic Virtual Buddy for Social Support

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in employing Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) as companions or coaches. These roles are typically performed by humans and require exhibiting certain social behaviors, such as providing social support. For interactions between users and coaching or companion ECAs to become truly social,...

User Validation of an Empathic Virtual Buddy against Cyberbullying

People are able to comfort others by talking about their problems. In our research, we are exploring whether computers can provide social support in a similar manner. Recently, we proposed a design for an empathic virtual buddy that supports victims of cyberbullying. To validate our approach in providing social support and to gather feedback...