Participatory Design of Virtual Humans for Mental Health Support Among North American Computer Science Students: Voice, Appearance, and the Similarity-attraction Effect

IF 1.9 4区计算机科学 Q3 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception Pub Date : 2023-08-05 DOI:10.1145/3613961

P. Feijóo-García, Chase Wrenn, J. Stuart, A. G. de Siqueira, Benjamin C. Lok

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Abstract

Virtual humans (VHs) have the potential to support mental wellness among college computer science (CS) students. However, designing effective VHs for counseling purposes requires a clear understanding of students’ demographics, backgrounds, and expectations. To this end, we conducted two user studies with 216 CS students from a major university in North America. In the first study, we explored how students co-designed VHs to support mental wellness conversations and found that the VHs’ demographics, appearance, and voice closely resembled the characteristics of their designers. In the second study, we investigated how the interplay between the VH’s appearance and voice impacted the agent’s effectiveness in promoting CS students’ intentions toward gratitude journaling. Our findings suggest that the active participation of CS students in VH design leads to the creation of agents that closely resemble their designers. Moreover, we found that the interplay between the VH’s appearance and voice impacts the agent’s effectiveness in promoting CS students’ intentions toward mental wellness techniques.

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北美计算机科学专业学生心理健康支持虚拟人的参与性设计：声音、外表和相似吸引效应

虚拟人（VHs）有可能支持大学计算机科学（CS）学生的心理健康。然而，为咨询目的设计有效的VH需要清楚地了解学生的人口统计、背景和期望。为此，我们对来自北美一所主要大学的216名CS学生进行了两项用户研究。在第一项研究中，我们探讨了学生们如何共同设计VH来支持心理健康对话，并发现VH的人口统计、外观和声音与他们的设计师的特征非常相似。在第二项研究中，我们调查了VH的外表和声音之间的相互作用如何影响代理人在促进CS学生对感恩日记的意图方面的有效性。我们的研究结果表明，CS学生积极参与VH设计，可以创造出与他们的设计师非常相似的代理。此外，我们发现VH的外表和声音之间的相互作用影响了代理人在促进CS学生对心理健康技术的意图方面的有效性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception 工程技术-计算机：软件工程

CiteScore

3.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

12 months

期刊介绍： ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP) aims to strengthen the synergy between computer science and psychology/perception by publishing top quality papers that help to unify research in these fields. The journal publishes inter-disciplinary research of significant and lasting value in any topic area that spans both Computer Science and Perceptual Psychology. All papers must incorporate both perceptual and computer science components.