Rob Bowman

Title: Designing Conversational User Interfaces for More Effective Mood Logging

Supervision Team: Gavin Doherty, TCD/ Benjamin Cowan, UCD / Anja Thieme, Microsoft Research Cambridge

Description:

Self-monitoring activities, such as mood logging, are a central part of many treatments for mental health problems. They serve to help raise awareness of the person’s own feelings, daily activities and cognitive processes, and provide information that can inform future treatment. One interesting possibility for supporting such self-disclosure is through conversational user interfaces, allowing users to disclose sensitive information without judgment, facilitating more honest reflection and emotional reaction. Currently there is little understanding about 1) the opportunities and challenges that potential users see in using conversational interfaces for mood logging; 2) appropriate design parameters (e.g. appropriate dialogue structure, linguistic strategies) and their effect on user engagement; and, critically, 3) how effective this interaction would be in producing honest and frequent reporting in a real world deployment. This PhD will aim to target these three challenge areas.

This PhD is also supported by Microsoft Research through its PhD Scholarship Programme.