Leading and following with a virtual trainer

This paper describes experiments with a virtual fitness trainer capable of mutually coordinated interaction. The virtual human co-exercises along with the user, leading as well as following in tempo, to motivate the user and to influence the speed with which the user performs the exercises. In a series of three experiments (20 participants in total) we attempted to influence the users' performance by manipulating the (timing of the) exercise behavior of the virtual trainer. The results show that it is possible to do this implicitly, using only micro adjustments to its bodily behavior. As such, the system is a rst step in the direction of mutually coordinated bodily interaction for virtual humans

A Trip to the Moon: Personalized Animated Movies for Self-reflection

Self-tracking physiological and psychological data poses the challenge of presentation and interpretation. Insightful narratives for self-tracking data can motivate the user towards constructive self-reflection. One powerful form of narrative that engages audience across various culture and age groups is animated movies. We collected a week of self-reported mood and behavior data from each user and created in Unity a personalized animation based on their data. We evaluated the impact of their video in a randomized control trial with a non-personalized animated video as control. We found that personalized videos tend to be more emotionally engaging, encouraging greater and lengthier writing that indicated self-reflection about moods and behaviors, compared to non-personalized control videos

Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

Children's Health: Evaluating the Impact of Digital Technology. Final Report for Sunderland City Council.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Children’s Health project sponsored by the City of Sunderland Digital Challenge project examined the impact of providing health-focused digital technologies to children aged 11-15 years, in terms of their usage and requirements of such technologies, and their subsequent behavioural changes. The empirical study ran with three groups of six children over a period of seven weeks for each group. A console-based exercise game and an exercise-focused social website were used in the study and the focus was on opportunistic (unstructured/unplanned) exercise. The emergent findings are: • Data collected about physical activity must be more extensive than simple step counts. • Data collection technologies for activities must be ubiquitous but invisible. • Social interaction via technology is expected; positive messages reinforcing attainments of goals are valued; negative feedback is seen as demotivating. • participants were very open to sharing information (privacy was not a concern). • Authority figures have a significant impact on restricting adolescents’ use of technologies. This document reports the how the study was conducted, analyses the findings and draws conclusions from these regarding how to use digital technologies to improve and/or maintain the physical activity levels of children throughout their adolescence and on into adulthood. The appendices provide the detailed (anonymised) data collected during the study and the background literature review

No Grice: Computers that Lie, Deceive and Conceal

In the future our daily life interactions with other people, with computers, robots and smart environments will be recorded and interpreted by computers or embedded intelligence in environments, furniture, robots, displays, and wearables. These sensors record our activities, our behavior, and our interactions. Fusion of such information and reasoning about such information makes it possible, using computational models of human behavior and activities, to provide context- and person-aware interpretations of human behavior and activities, including determination of attitudes, moods, and emotions. Sensors include cameras, microphones, eye trackers, position and proximity sensors, tactile or smell sensors, et cetera. Sensors can be embedded in an environment, but they can also move around, for example, if they are part of a mobile social robot or if they are part of devices we carry around or are embedded in our clothes or body. \ud \ud Our daily life behavior and daily life interactions are recorded and interpreted. How can we use such environments and how can such environments use us? Do we always want to cooperate with these environments; do these environments always want to cooperate with us? In this paper we argue that there are many reasons that users or rather human partners of these environments do want to keep information about their intentions and their emotions hidden from these smart environments. On the other hand, their artificial interaction partner may have similar reasons to not give away all information they have or to treat their human partner as an opponent rather than someone that has to be supported by smart technology.\ud \ud This will be elaborated in this paper. We will survey examples of human-computer interactions where there is not necessarily a goal to be explicit about intentions and feelings. In subsequent sections we will look at (1) the computer as a conversational partner, (2) the computer as a butler or diary companion, (3) the computer as a teacher or a trainer, acting in a virtual training environment (a serious game), (4) sports applications (that are not necessarily different from serious game or education environments), and games and entertainment applications

A Conversational Agent in mHealth for Self-Management of Parkinson’s Disease

Nos dias que correm vivemos rodeados de tecnologia, onde os “smartphones” preenchem um espaço muito importante nas nossas vidas. O uso de serviços móveis pelos “smartphones” no âmbito da saúde tem sido cada vez mais próspero, com um uso acessível por parte de todos. Com os avanços ao nível de inteligência artificial, especialmente no que toca à criação de sistemas inteligentes que comuniquem de forma natural com os humanos, torna-se possível criar agentes de conversação adequados para uma interação pessoa-máquina com distintos objetivos. Um dos objetivos que o projeto ONParkinson tem é o de aumentar a adesão terapêutica por parte das pessoas com doença de Parkinson. Sendo que a execução recorrente de exercício físico é essencial na gestão dos sintomas da doença de Parkinson. Por isso, existe a necessidade de interagir, educar e motivar os pacientes com doença de Parkinson para uma maior adesão aos exercícios terapêuticos. Este trabalho propõe uma solução, no âmbito do projeto ONParkinson, que envolve a criaçãao de um agente de conversação com unidades de conhecimento mais focadas nos exercicios terapêuticos e com unidades que visam motivar e manter a pessoa com doença de Parkinson motivada para a realização de exercícios terapêuticos. A avaliação da solução envolve fisioterapeutas e pessoas com doença de Parkinson. O plano de avaliação estabelece o estudo do desempenho técnico, da experiência do utilizador e da investigação na área da Saúde. Grande parte do conjunto dos pacientes com doença de Parkinson tem uma idade avançada, o que poderia levar a uma maior resistência ao uso das novas tecnologias. No entanto, os valores obtidos nos indicadores referentes à perspetiva de utilidade, facilidade de uso e satisfação da utilização demonstram um bom nível de usabilidade da solução proposta. Como a investigação de eficácia clínica ainda não foi conduzida, não é possível concluir a efiácia da solução proposta no aumento da adesão terapêutica por parte dos pacientes com doença de Parkinson.Nowadays, we live surrounded by technology, where smartphones fill a very important space in our lives. The use of mobile services by smartphones in the health sector has been increasingly prosperous, with accessible use by everyone. With advances in artificial intelligence methodologies, regarding the creation of intelligent systems that communicate naturally with humans, it is possible to create conversational agents for person-machine interaction with different objectives. One of the goals of the ONParkinson project is to increase therapeutic adherence by people with Parkinson’s disease. The recurrent execution of physical exercise is essential in the management of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, there is a need to interact, educate and motivate patients with Parkinson’s disease for greater adherence to therapeutic exercises. This work proposes a solution, within the scope of the ONParkinson project, which involves the creation of a conversation agent with units of knowledge more focused on therapeutic exercises and with units aiming to motivate and keep the person with Parkinson’s disease motivated to perform therapeutic exercises. The evaluation of the solution involves physical therapists and patients with Parkinson’s disease. The evaluation plan establishes the study of technical performance, the study of user experience and Health research study. A large part of the set of patients with Parkinson’s disease is of advanced age, which could lead to greater resistance to the use of new technologies. However, the values obtained in the indicators referring to the perception of usefulness, ease of use and interaction satisfaction demonstrate a good level of usability of the proposed solution. As the investigation of clinical efficacy has not yet been conducted, it is not possible to conclude the effectiveness of the proposed solution in increasing therapeutic adherence by patients with Parkinson’s disease

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Adapting Progress Feedback and Emotional Support to Learner Personality

Peer reviewedPostprin