HCC: Small: Designing Autonomy ­Preserving Interactions in Intelligent Assistants for Older Adults

Siri和Alexa等智能助理（IA）的日益普及，促使人们探索这些设备如何帮助老年人完成日常护理任务。 然而，尽管IA具有潜在的便利性，但当前的方法在一定程度上受到限制，因为它们未能为用户提供对其数据和交互的足够控制感。 缺乏机构在执行卫生信息任务方面特别成问题;老年人发现，既要理解IA返回的数据，又要确定谁可以访问他们共享的关键个人和健康数据，这都是一项挑战。 这个项目将促进我们对如何设计IA的理解，积极影响老年人的自主意识，当使用它们来执行健康信息任务在家里。 为此，研究团队将利用与印第安纳波利斯社区的高级组织和非正式护理人员的现有合作伙伴关系，以确定他们与IA现有互动和挑战的具体情况;然后，这些研究结果将用于建立和评估新的设计原则，这些原则可以支持更透明的对话IA互动，用于健康信息管理。 项目成果有可能将IA设计和开发从提供信息服务的黑匣子转变为能够获得可信的人类-AI关系的更透明的对话合作伙伴。 此外，还将通过本科生和研究生，包括妇女和少数民族学生参与和指导研究活动，产生更广泛的影响。第一个将确定重要的价值观，塑造寻求帮助的信念，老年人在现有的非正式照顾者的关系和设置;根据这些研究结果，该团队将从事老年人合作设计新的IA互动策略，符合他们的需求和期望在健康信息任务。 在第二个推力中，系统原型和以用户为中心的评估活动将确定由此产生的设计策略在满足老年人的自主需求和IA接受度方面的潜力和局限性，例如，包括高度关注提供替代信息源和回答用户的问题，以及在与IA互动期间提供访问隐私设置和个人数据共享偏好的途径。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响评审标准。

The growing availability of intelligent assistants (IAs) such as Siri and Alexa has prompted exploration of how such devices can assist older adults with daily care tasks. Yet, the potential convenience of IAs notwithstanding, current approaches are limited in part because they fail to provide users with enough sense of control over their data and interactions. The lack of agency is particularly problematic for carrying out health information tasks; older adults find it challenging both to understand the data returned by the IA and to determine who has access to the critical personal and health data they share. This project will advance our understanding of how to design IAs that positively influence older adults' sense of autonomy when using them to carry out health information tasks at home. To this end, the research team will leverage existing partnerships with senior organizations and informal caregivers in the Indianapolis community to ascertain specifics about their existing interactions and challenges with IAs; these findings will then be used to establish and evaluate novel design principles that can support more transparent conversational IA interactions for health information management. Project outcomes have the potential to transform IA design and development from black boxes that provide information services to more transparent conversational partners that are able to garner trusted human-AI relationships. Additional broad impact will derive from involvement and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, including women and minorities, in the research activities.The work will involve two main thrusts. The first will identify the important values that shape the help-seeking beliefs of older adults in existing informal caregiver relationships and settings; based on those findings, the team will engage older adults to collaboratively design new IA interaction strategies aligned to their needs and expectations during health information tasks. In the second thrust, system prototyping and user-centered evaluation activities will identify the potential and limitations of the resulting design strategies in addressing human autonomy needs and IA acceptance among older adults, examples to include a heightened focus on providing alternative information sources and answers as a response to users' questions, and providing pathways to access privacy settings and personal data sharing preferences during interactions with the IA.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.