Human-agent relationships II Alex Cepoi

Papers “What Would Jiminy Cricket Do? Lessons From the First Social Wearable”, Timothy Bickmore “Persuasion, Task Interruption and Health Regimen Adherence”, Timothy Bickmore, Daniel Mauer, Francisco Crespo and Thomas Brown

Importance Want to develop a “wearable conscience” – sense user’s environment – persuade him to make healthy decisions How and when to interrupt? – modality of interruption – persuasive yet not annoying or intrusive

Problems addressed unhealthy dietary habits (leading cause of death in the US) adherence to prescribed medication (only 50% in the US) little to no physical exercise taking breaks during work … and a lot more (scriptable) Solution: personal reminder system

Prototype 1: Jiminy Cricket Name: Jiminy Cricket Role: Personal Conscience Target: Pinocchio Appointed by: Blue Fairy Duty: Offer advice on long- term consequences of Pinocchio’s actions

Prototype 1: Problems first meeting => unwanted advice => smashed and killed with a hammer by Pinocchio … comes back as a ghost to counsel Pinocchio

Prototype 1: Lessons Learnt Requirements: Social and Relational Competency – establish and maintain relationship (use natural language) – speak persuasively – don’t be annoying/intrusive (i.e. don’t get smashed by a hammer) – use social dialog for building trust – convey empathy Adeptness at Interruption – maximize long-term compliance Portability Sensing Ability – sense when the user is at a point of decision making Persistence – memory of past interactions with users

Prototype 2: PDA Experiences everything you do – accelerometer – GPS – microphone – smoke detectors Suggests the “right” thing to do => healthier lifestyle, i.e. – healthy over unhealthy foods – taking the stairs rather then the lift – avoid situations where you would smoke/drink to much

Study 1: Modality Study 4 variants: TEXT: standard text interface IMAGE: + static image ANIM: + animated image FULL: + animated image + recorded speech Results: (12 subjects) ANIM and FULL – better social bonding FULL was discarded for privacy reasons

Study 2: Task Interruption (Setting) Primary activity: answer questions Secondary (healthy) activity: wrist rests 29 subjects were told that they should – answer as many questions as possible – talk to their PDAs, when it beeps The PDA always ends every conversation with: “Please rest your wrists for as long as you can.” Internal dilemma: answer more questions (performance) vs. rest wrists longer (healthy)

Study 2.1: Politeness and Compliance 4 alert sounds for interrupting: – AUDIO1 – very polite (subtle “ping”) – AUDIO2 – less polite – AUDIO3 – quite impolite – AUDIO4 – very impolite (loud klaxon) Results: – desire to continue using the advisor varies directly with politeness – subjects rested longer for less polite sounds but only at first – with continued use, the most annoying sounds result in the shortest rest time – there is a tradeoff between short-term compliance and long-term adherence

Study 2.1: Politeness and Compliance

Study 2.2: Interruption Negotiation 16 subjects, 4 options: – NEGOTIATED – a.k.a. “snooze” – FOREWARN – warning before interruption – SOCIAL – apologize for interrupting – BASELINE – AUDIO3 Results: – SOCIAL outperformed all other options with respect to politeness, effectiveness, and desire to continue using – NEGOTIATED was considered the least effective, although rest time was second only to SOCIAL – FOREWARN was considered the least polite Sorry to interrupt, …

Other studies: compliance rate is high when user is idle compliance rate is higher when robot is serious, rather than “playful” even ignored interruptions can negatively affect performance negotiation systems yield better results than authoritative ones knowing a user’s schedule helps in increasing acceptance, e.g. “If you take your medicine now, I won’t have to interrupt you during your favorite TV show later” as familiarity grows, users are more accepting of less polite forms of interruption

Conclusions must find a tradeoff between short-term compliance and long-term adherence (politeness is a variable) empathy is the easiest way to be imply politeness, but one should combine the other options also building trust is crucial to continued use study puts subjects in an relaxed (non-stressful) environment, what happens under stress? (SILENCE option is mandatory) what would happen in continued use? (drawing conclusions from more than 2 resting times)

Questions? Thank You!

I don’t know…