Award Abstract # 2144503
CAREER: Conversational User Interfaces to Support Older Adults' Social Wellness

NSF Org: IIS
Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
Recipient: TRUSTEES OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: May 4, 2022
Latest Amendment Date: March 16, 2023
Award Number: 2144503
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Veronica Newhart
vnewhart@nsf.gov
 (703)292-0000
IIS
 Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: May 15, 2022
End Date: April 30, 2027 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $543,539.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $543,539.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2022 = $200,640.00
FY 2023 = $342,899.00
History of Investigator:
  • Aqueasha Martin-Hammond (Principal Investigator)
    aqumarti@iupui.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Indiana University
107 S INDIANA AVE
BLOOMINGTON
IN  US  47405-7000
(317)278-3473
Sponsor Congressional District: 09
Primary Place of Performance: Indiana University Purdue Univ
535 W Michigan St., IT
Indianapolis
IN  US  46202-3103
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
07
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): YH86RTW2YVJ4
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Information Technology Researc,
HCC-Human-Centered Computing
Primary Program Source: 010V2122DB R&RA ARP Act DEFC V
01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7367, 1045, 102Z
Program Element Code(s): 164000, 736700
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

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.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Karkera, Yukta and Tandukar, Barsa and Chandra, Sowmya and Martin-Hammond, Aqueasha "Building Community Capacity: Exploring Voice Assistants to Support Older Adults in an Independent Living Community" 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581561 Citation Details
Shinde, Pranali Uttam and Martin-Hammond, Aqueasha "Designing to Support Blind and Visually Impaired Older Adults in Managing the Invisible Labor of Social Participation: Opportunities and Challenges" , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642203 Citation Details

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