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

Siri和Alexa等智能助手(IAS)的日益普及促使人们探索此类设备如何帮助老年人处理日常护理任务。然而，尽管IAS具有潜在的便利性，但目前的方法在一定程度上是有限的，因为它们未能为用户提供对其数据和交互的足够控制感。缺乏机构对执行健康信息任务尤其成问题；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，这两方面都具有挑战性。这个项目将促进我们对如何设计IAS的理解，以积极影响老年人在家中执行健康信息任务时的自主感。为此，研究小组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伙伴关系，以确定他们与IAS现有互动和挑战的细节；然后，这些发现将被用于建立和评估新的设计原则，这些设计原则可以支持更透明的对话式IA互动，以进行健康信息管理。项目成果有可能将IA的设计和开发从提供信息服务的黑匣子转变为能够获得信任的人类-人工智能关系的更透明的对话伙伴。本科生和研究生，包括妇女和少数民族，参与和指导研究活动将产生更广泛的影响。这项工作将涉及两个主要方面。第一项研究将确定在现有的非正式照顾者关系和环境中塑造老年人求助信念的重要价值观；基于这些发现，该团队将动员老年人合作设计新的IA互动策略，使之与他们在健康信息任务中的需求和期望保持一致。在第二个重点中，系统原型和以用户为中心的评估活动将确定所产生的设计策略在满足人的自主需求和老年人对IA的接受方面的潜力和局限性，例如，更加关注提供替代信息源和答案以回应用户的问题，并在与IA的互动中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，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.