CAREER: Conversational User Interfaces to Support Older Adults' Social Wellness

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。通过持续的人际关系网络维持社会健康对保持健康至关重要。然而，随着个人年龄的增长，保持社交活动可能会变得具有挑战性。例如，许多老年人因退休而搬迁，经历流动性的变化，或开始失去家人和朋友，这可能会削弱他们的社会网络结构。因此，老年人有可能感到孤独和社会孤立，这可能导致身心健康下降。该项目将研究语音助手和聊天机器人等新兴会话用户界面的潜力，以帮助老年人与周围的世界保持联系，从而改善他们的社交健康。通过让老年人参与设计过程，并采用最先进的会话设计方法，本研究将开发经验验证的个性化会话界面的新策略，利用现实世界的社会联系，激励老年人与其他人参与社会活动。该项目还将产生新的课程、体验式学习机会、社区参与倡议和工具，以帮助反思人工智能技术对日益老龄化的社会的影响。该项目利用社会行为理论来识别和研究一种新的对话互动方法，以支持老年人维持和建立与他人的社会关系。为此，该团队将采用参与式方法，利用与高级组织和老年人的密切社区合作。这项研究将包括三个主要目标。首先，该团队将对老年人在相互联系的世界中维持社会健康的需求以及构成孤立风险的情况进行实证分析。其次，该团队将探索对话设计原则，以支持鼓励参与社会健康活动的协作双向对话，特别关注人们对隐私的关注以及他们使用该系统的情况。最后，该团队将开发和评估一个新的平台，实施经过测试的会话策略，以激励老年人参与有社会意义的活动。该项目将促进对设计和部署会话用户界面的用途、挑战和现实世界障碍的了解，以支持老年人的社会健康，为以人为本的人工智能、老龄化和会话设计做出贡献。这项研究有望揭示新的方法，既能使老年人的社会健康受益，又能降低社会孤立的风险。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Maintaining social wellness through a sustained network of in-person relationships is essential to preserving health. Yet, as individuals age, remaining socially active can become challenging. For example, many older adults relocate for retirement, experience changes in mobility, or begin losing family and friends, which may weaken the fabric of their social network. Because of this, older adults are at risk of experiencing feelings of loneliness and social isolation, which may lead to declines in mental and physical health. This project will investigate the potential of emerging conversational user interfaces such as voice assistants and chatbots to help older adults stay connected with the world around them, thus improving their social wellness. By engaging older adults in the design process and adapting state-of-the-art conversational design methods, this work will develop empirically validated novel strategies for personalized conversational interfaces that leverage real-world social connections and motivate older adults to engage in social activities with other people. The project will also yield new curriculum, experiential learning opportunities, community engagement initiatives, and tools to aid reflective thinking of the impact of artificially intelligent technologies on an increasingly aging society.This project leverages social-behavioral theories to identify and examine a new family of conversational interaction approaches for supporting older adults in maintaining and building social relationships with others. To do so, the team will employ participatory methods that leverage close community collaborations with senior organizations and older adults. The research will include three main aims. First, the team will generate an empirical account of the needs of older adults to maintain social wellness in an interconnected world, along with situations that pose risks of isolation. Second, the team will explore conversational design principles to support collaborative two-way dialogues that encourage engagement in social wellness activities, with particular attention to people's concerns about privacy and aspects of the situation where they are using the system. Finally, the team will develop and evaluate a novel platform implementing tested conversational strategies to motivate older adults' participation in socially meaningful activities. This project will advance knowledge of the uses, challenges, and real-world barriers of designing and deploying conversational user interfaces to support older adults' social wellness, contributing to human-centered artificial intelligence, aging, and conversational design. The research is expected to reveal new approaches that can benefit older adults' social wellness while decreasing the risk of social isolation.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.