Experience Sharing Conversational Agent for Type II Diabetes

Abstract

In this work, a conversational interaction was designed and implemented to test the effect of references to past events or shared experiences rephrased into motivational phrases within the context of working towards a diet related goal that can assist with type II diabetes over multiple sessions.
Prior works that utilized a memory typically did not utilize a memory to refer to the past within conversations and when past events were referred to within a conversation, they were not utilized with motivational rephrasing. Most prior works did not analyze long term interaction or how references to past events should have been utilized. To further research in this area, the following research questions were posed.
1.) Does referring to previous sessions improve goal attainment?
2.) Does referring to previous sessions improve user experience?
3.) Does a variety of references differ from making the same reference?
To determine the answers to these questions, interactions were carried out through Zoom in a between subjects experiment with three groups of participants.
The results, once analyzed, found that there was a significant difference between interactions that only make references to the same shared experience and interactions that make references to various shared experiences where various shared experiences resulted in a significant increase in the change in motivation from prior to the experiment to during the experiment.
This offers the following contributions:
1.) Provide clarity on how shared experiences should be used and not only whether they should be used.
2.) A motivational memory utilizing shared experiences with intrinsic motivational value
3.) Determine the effect of motivational references on goal achievement and user experience.
This holds promise for the use of such a memory for goal based efforts and future work can further the domains of application and effectiveness of the motivational memory and shared experiences.