Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent for Parents as Proxies for Their Children in Healthy Eating: Development and User Testing

Diva Smriti; Tsui-Sui Annie Kao; Rahil Rathod; Ji Youn Shin; Wei Peng; Jake Williams; Munif Ishad Mujib; Meghan Colosimo; Jina Huh-Yoo

doi:10.2196/38908

Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent for Parents as Proxies for Their Children in Healthy Eating: Development and User Testing

JMIR Hum Factors. 2022 Oct 7;9(4):e38908. doi: 10.2196/38908.

Authors

Diva Smriti¹, Tsui-Sui Annie Kao², Rahil Rathod³, Ji Youn Shin⁴, Wei Peng⁵, Jake Williams¹, Munif Ishad Mujib¹, Meghan Colosimo⁶, Jina Huh-Yoo¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
² College of Nursing, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
³ Tata Consultancy Services, Edison, NJ, United States.
⁴ College of Design, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States.
⁵ College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
⁶ Vivante Health, Houston, TX, United States.

PMID: 36206036
PMCID: PMC9587490
DOI: 10.2196/38908

Abstract

Background: Increased adoption of off-the-shelf conversational agents (CAs) brings opportunities to integrate therapeutic interventions. Motivational Interviewing (MI) can then be integrated with CAs for cost-effective access to it. MI can be especially beneficial for parents who often have low motivation because of limited time and resources to eat healthy together with their children.

Objective: We developed a Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent (MICA) to improve healthy eating in parents who serve as a proxy for health behavior change in their children. Proxy relationships involve a person serving as a catalyst for behavior change in another person. Parents, serving as proxies, can bring about behavior change in their children.

Methods: We conducted user test sessions of the MICA prototype to understand the perceived acceptability and usefulness of the MICA prototype by parents. A total of 24 parents of young children participated in 2 user test sessions with MICA, approximately 2 weeks apart. After parents' interaction with the MICA prototype in each user test session, we used qualitative interviews to understand parents' perceptions and suggestions for improvements in MICA.

Results: Findings showed participants' perceived usefulness of MICAs for helping them self-reflect and motivating them to adopt healthier eating habits together with their children. Participants further suggested various ways in which MICA can help them safely manage their children's eating behaviors and provide customized support for their proxy needs and goals.

Conclusions: We have discussed how the user experience of CAs can be improved to uniquely offer support to parents who serve as proxies in changing the behavior of their children. We have concluded with implications for a larger context of designing MI-based CAs for supporting proxy relationships for health behavior change.

Keywords: conversational agents; healthy eating; motivational interviewing; parents; proxy; voice agents; voice user interface.

©Diva Smriti, Tsui-Sui Annie Kao, Rahil Rathod, Ji Youn Shin, Wei Peng, Jake Williams, Munif Ishad Mujib, Meghan Colosimo, Jina Huh-Yoo. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (https://humanfactors.jmir.org), 07.10.2022.