Human involvement in e-coaching: Effects on effectiveness, perceived influence and trust

Coaching practices are rapidly changing due to advances in pervasive computing: behavior of coachees can unobtrusively be monitored in real time, and coaching can be remote or even fully automated. Fully autonomous e-coaching systems hold promise for improving people’s self-management, but also raise questions about the importance of human involvement in the e-coaching process. This paper describes an empirical ‘Wizard of Oz’ study in which coachees (N=82) were coached to take the stairs by either another person (N=20) or the e-coaching system eMate. Crucially, some coachees were made to believe that they would receive one type of coaching (human or computerized), while in reality they received the other. Results show that the coaching was equally effective in all groups, but that people who believed to be coached by a human judged the coaching to be more influential. No difference was found between groups in how trustworthy coachees found their coaches

Exploring Persona-Scenarios - Using Storytelling to Create Design Ideas

International audienceThis paper explores the persona-scenario method by investigating how the method can support project participants in generating shared understandings and design ideas. As persona-scenarios are stories we draw on narrative theory to define what a persona-scenario is and which narrative elements it should consist of. Based on an empirical study a key finding is that despite our inherent human ability to construct, tell, and interpret stories it is not easy to write and present a good, coherent, and design-oriented story without methodical support. The paper therefore contributes with guidelines that delineate a) what a design-oriented persona-scenario should consist of (product) and b) how to write it (procedure) in order to generate and validate as many, new, and shared understandings and design ideas as possible (purpose). The purpose of the guidelines is to facilitate the construction of persona-scenarios as good, coherent stories, which make sense to the storytellers and to the audience - and which therefore generate many, new, and shared understandings and design ideas