Decoding technological affordance and affective agency in medical live streaming: a human-AI collaborative DHL approach for service design decisions
Xi Li, Jianfei Zhu, Wenyi Zhuang, Danni Chang, Qi Zeng, Ching-Hung Lee · Journal of Engineering Design · 2026
This study aims to explore the intricate relationship between technological affordance and users’ affective agency within the context of medical live streaming, which is a kind of advanced digital service system. It seeks to understand how technology shapes user engagement and affective responses, which is crucial for enhancing user experience and the effectiveness of medical live streaming services. A novel analysis approach titled DHL approach is proposed (which combines the initial letters of each stage) that consists of three stages: (1) Data sourcing; (2) Human-AI topic modelling; (3) Logic formation. DHL, with a structural research framework incorporate with web text crawling, the LDA topic analysis, and Human-based topic regeneration and verification, and conceptual logic relationship formatting. The analysis distilled eight salient user-generated themes and mapped the sequential logic of technological affordance (digital affordance→ structural possibility→ service feasibility) alongside users’ affective agency (motivation triggering→ emotional connection → evaluative feedback). By translating these intertwined pathways into an explicit ‘Technological affordance–Affective agency’ relationship, the study delivers empirically grounded heuristics for service-design decisions. Thereby, abstract user signals could be converted into concrete, scenario-specific design specifications.