Exploring autonomy in the design of an intelligent health assistant for older adults
Jamie Sanders, Aqueasha M. Martin-Hammond · 2019
In the last few years, interest in intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) to aid older adults in living healthier and longer at home has seen a drastic increase. As these devices become more integrated into the lives of older adults to assist with health and wellness tasks, it is rapidly becoming important to understand how to design systems that also match older adults' goals for how they want to govern their personal health tasks. As a first step in understanding older adults' needs for autonomy in intelligent health assistant (IHA) design, we conducted a Wizard of Oz (WOZ) study that included a semi-structured interview with 10 older adults to understand their needs and concerns about IHAs for consumer health. We present our findings as opportunities to design IHAs that help inform users in order to meet their needs for autonomy.