Smart Conversational Agents for Reminiscence

In this paper we describe the requirements and early system design for a smart conversational agent that can assist older adults in the reminiscence process. The practice of reminiscence has well documented benefits for the mental, social and emotional well-being of older adults. However, the technology support, valuable in many different ways, is still limited in terms of need of co-located human presence, data collection capabilities, and ability to support sustained engagement, thus missing key opportunities to improve care practices, facilitate social interactions, and bring the reminiscence practice closer to those with less opportunities to engage in co-located sessions with a (trained) companion. We discuss conversational agents and cognitive services as the platform for building the next generation of reminiscence applications, and introduce the concept application of a smart reminiscence agent

Crowdsourcing for Reminiscence Chatbot Design

In this work-in-progress paper we discuss the challenges in identifying effective and scalable crowd-based strategies for designing content, conversation logic, and meaningful metrics for a reminiscence chatbot targeted at older adults. We formalize the problem and outline the main research questions that drive the research agenda in chatbot design for reminiscence and for relational agents for older adults in general

Remi: An AI Conversational Agent to Reminisce with Photos

We propose a conversational AI agent design concept called Remi to signify and celebrate reminiscence. Remi would be a networked digital photo frame. It can engage with older adults and simulate interactions with their loved ones through recognition of uploaded photos, conversation generation around the photographs and interactivity through natural language processing. Remi will allow users to upload old and recent photographs and videos into the device and even voice record anecdotes and memories around the imagery. Old photographs could be restored and turned into a few seconds of ‘live photos’ based on conversations with the user to reminisce with them. Beyond this processing, Remi will have a built-in personality to simulate and prompt conversations around a photograph. This would mean that older adults can interact and talk to Remi whenever they want and converse on demand

Conversational affective social robots for ageing and dementia support

Socially assistive robots (SAR) hold significant potential to assist older adults and people with dementia in human engagement and clinical contexts by supporting mental health and independence at home. While SAR research has recently experienced prolific growth, long-term trust, clinical translation and patient benefit remain immature. Affective human-robot interactions are unresolved and the deployment of robots with conversational abilities is fundamental for robustness and humanrobot engagement. In this paper, we review the state of the art within the past two decades, design trends, and current applications of conversational affective SAR for ageing and dementia support. A horizon scanning of AI voice technology for healthcare, including ubiquitous smart speakers, is further introduced to address current gaps inhibiting home use. We discuss the role of user-centred approaches in the design of voice systems, including the capacity to handle communication breakdowns for effective use by target populations. We summarise the state of development in interactions using speech and natural language processing, which forms a baseline for longitudinal health monitoring and cognitive assessment. Drawing from this foundation, we identify open challenges and propose future directions to advance conversational affective social robots for: 1) user engagement, 2) deployment in real-world settings, and 3) clinical translation

Design pattern for conversational agents handling data-driven requests

The aim of this research project is to identify design principles for the development of CAs. In the context of this thesis, the research questions are: “According to which design principles are Conversational Agents developed?” and “How can these design principles be meaningfully categorized and described?”. For the aggregation of the design principles, the first step was a systematic literature search according to Vom Brocke et al. (2009). The systematic literature review was followed by a qualitative literature analysis according to Kuckartz (2018). The result of this work is the identification of 15 meta-requirements that could be categorised by means of three main categories and a further seven subcategories. This was followed by the declaration of seven design principles based on the subcategories and their meta-requirements

It's Just My History Isn't It? Understanding smart journaling practices

Smart journals are both an emerging class of lifelogging applications and novel digital possessions, which are used to create and curate a personal record of one's life. Through an in-depth interview study of analogue and digital journaling practices, and by drawing on a wide range of research around 'technologies of memory', we address fundamental questions about how people manage and value digital records of the past. Appreciating journaling as deeply idiographic, we map a broad range of user practices and motivations and use this understanding to ground four design considerations: recognizing the motivation to account for one's life; supporting the authoring of a unique perspective and finding a place for passive tracking as a chronicle. Finally, we argue that smart journals signal a maturing orientation to issues of digital archiving