Designing Healthcare Relational Agents: A Conceptual Framework with User-Centered Design Guidelines

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual framework for designing relational agents (RAs) in healthcare contexts, developed through the findings from multiple user studies on RAs about their acceptance, efficacy, and usability. The framework emphasizes a user-centered design (UCD) approach that takes into account the unique needs and preferences of patients, nonpatient users, and healthcare professionals (HCPs). Based on the results of these studies, we analyzed and refined the RA designs and proposed a UCD-based conceptual framework for designing effective and user-friendly healthcare RAs. The paper aims to provide an initial resource for researchers, designers, and developers interested in developing RAs for healthcare contexts by thinking of UCD techniques.