Virtual Agents with Augmented Reality in Digital Healthcare

Virtual agents benefit from reducing the staffing required in current services, such as customer care and education. This benefit also can be expected in digital healthcare by providing on-demand services and covering limited human resources of medical staff. Therefore, in this study, we explore how virtual agents can be more effective in the context of digital healthcare. For this, an experiment has been conducted to find the user experience's effectiveness according to the different appearances, zoomorphic or professional, and the effect of the Augmented Reality function on digital healthcare virtual agents. In the experiments, 80 participants tested four applications implemented with different appearances of a virtual agent with AR functions. As a result, it was found that the AR function had a positive effect in terms of intention to use and reduced anxiety. In addition, it was observed that the zoomorphic appearance had a positive effect on perceived enjoyment, perceived sociability, and social influence. Based on the results of this study, it is expected that when the advantages of AR functions and the advantages of zoomorphic appearance are combined, it can effectively influence the implementation design of digital healthcare virtual agents.