Activating the Everyday

MAKING EVERYDAY THINGS TALK

 What if things had a voice? What if we could talk directly to things instead of using a mediating voice interface such as an Alexa or a Google Assistant? 

The project aims to explore the role of voice in human-thing interactions by allowing users to talk directly to things instead of using a mediating voice interface such as an Alexa or a Google Assistant.

Publications:

Reddy, A., Kocaballi, A. B., Nicenboim, I., Søndergaard, M. L. J., Lupetti, M. L., Key, C., . . . Strengers, Y. (2021). Making Everyday Things Talk: Speculative Conversations into The Future of Voice Interfaces at Home. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’21). Doi:10.1145/3411763.3450390

DIGITAL SCRIBE

Current generation electronic health records suffer a number of problems that make them inefficient and associated with poor clinical satisfaction. Digital scribes or intelligent documentation support systems, take advantage of advances in speech recognition, natural language processing and artificial intelligence, to automate the clinical documentation task currently conducted by humans. 

The project aims to develop a conversational system that listens to doctor-patient conversations during a consultation and automatically generates clinical note summaries.

Publications:

Rezazadegan, D., Berkovsky, S., Quiroz, J. C., Kocaballi, A. B., Wang, Y., Laranjo, L., & Coiera, E. (2021). Symbolic And Statistical Learning Approaches to Speech Summarization: A Scoping Review. Computer Speech and Language, 72, 17 Pages. Doi:10.1016/J.Csl.2021.101305

Quiroz, J. C., Laranjo, L., Tufanaru, C., Kocaballi, A. B., Rezazadegan, D., Berkovsky, S., & Coiera, E. (2021). Empirical Analysis of Zipf’s Law, Power Law, And Lognormal Distributions in Medical Discharge Reports. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 145, 9 Pages. Doi:10.1016/J.Ijmedinf.2020.104324

Quiroz, J. C., Laranjo, L., Kocaballi, A. B., Briatore, A., Berkovsky, S., Rezazadegan, D., & Coiera, E. (2020). Identifying Relevant Information in Medical Conversations to Summarize a Clinician-Patient Encounter. Health Informatics Journal, 26(4), 2906-2914. Doi:10.1177/1460458220951719

Quiroz, J. C., Laranjo, L., Kocaballi, A. B., Berkovsky, S., Rezazadegan, D., & Coiera, E. (2019). Challenges Of Developing a Digital Scribe To Reduce Clinical Documentation Burden. Npj Digital Medicine, 2, 6 Pages. Doi:10.1038/S41746-019-0190-1

Kocaballi, A. B., Coiera, E., Tong, H. L., White, S. J., Quiroz, J. C., Rezazadegan, F., . . . Laranjo, L. (2019). A Network Model of Activities In Primary Care Consultations. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 26(10), 1074-1082. Doi:10.1093/Jamia/Ocz046

Coiera, E., Kocaballi, A. B., Halamka, J., & Laranjo, L. (2018). The Digital Scribe. Npj Digital Medicine, 1, 5 Pages. Doi:10.1038/S41746-018-0066-9

Couples Therapy using Conversational Agents

There is a growing rate of failing marriages and relationships as couples surrender their efforts to reconcile. Couple therapy provides various psychotherapeutic solutions to help couples avoid relationship dissolution. However, this option is not easily accessible to every couple due to busy schedules or unaffordability. Conversational agents (CAs) could support couple therapy in a more accessible and scalable way to help resolve relationship problems. This project investigates the suitability of using conversational agents for individual therapy for couple problems.

Publications:

Yuksel, B. and Kocaballi, B. (in press). Conversational Agents to Support Couple Therapy. ACM OZCHI’22

A Virtual Companion for Patients in Hospitals

Social isolation and loneliness contribute to the development of depression and anxiety. Comorbidity of mental health issues in hospitalised patients increases the length of stay in hospital by up to 109% and costs the healthcare sector billions of dollars each year. This project aims to understand the potential suitability of embodied conversational agents (ECAs) to reduce feelings of social isolation and loneliness among hospital patients. To facilitate this, a video prototype of an ECA was developed for use in single-occupant hospital rooms. The ECA was designed to act as an intelligent assistant, a rehabilitation guide, and a conversational partner. A co-design workshop involving five healthcare professionals was conducted. The thematic analysis of the workshop transcripts identified some major themes including improving health literacy, reducing the time burden on healthcare professionals, preventing secondary mental health issues, and supporting higher acceptance of digital technologies by elderly patients.

Publications:

User Experience of Conversational Agents

Although various methods have been developed to evaluate conversational interfaces, there has been a lack of methods specifically focusing on evaluating user experience. This project explores the understandings of user experience (UX) in conversational interfaces literature and examines the six questionnaires commonly used for evaluating conversational systems in order to assess the potential suitability of these questionnaires to measure different UX dimensions in that context.

Publications:

Kocaballi, A. B., Laranjo, L., & Coiera, E. (2019). Understanding And Measuring User Experience in Conversational Interfaces. Interacting With Computers, 31(2), 192-207. Doi:10.1093/Iwc/Iwz015

Kocaballi, A. B., Laranjo, L., & Coiera, E. (2018). Measuring User Experience in Conversational Interfaces: A Comparison of Six Questionnaires. In Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference, HCI 2018. Doi:10.14236/Ewic/Hci2018.21

​​Kocaballi, A. B., Coiera, E., & Berkovsky, S. (2020). Revisiting Habitability in Conversational Systems. In Chi’20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHIi Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Pp. 8 Pages). Honolulu, HI: Assoc Computing Machinery. Doi:10.1145/3334480.3383014

Conversational Agents for Health and Wellbeing

Conversational agents have increasingly been used in healthcare applications. However, significant challenges remain in developing this technology. Recent research in this area has highlighted that: i) patient safety was rarely evaluated; ii) health outcomes were poorly measured, and iii) no standardised evaluation methods were employed. This project aims to address some of these current challenges and perform cutting-edge research on designing, developing, and evaluating CAs for health and wellbeing that aim to improve health outcomes and services, and satisfy unique application needs.

Publications:

Kocaballi, A. B., Quiroz, J. C., Rezazadegan, D., Berkovsky, S., Magrabi, F., Coiera, E., & Laranjo, L. (2020). Responses Of Conversational Agents to Health and Lifestyle Prompts: Investigation of Appropriateness And Presentation Structures. Journal Of Medical Internet Research, 22(2), 15 Pages. Doi:10.2196/15823

Kocaballi, A. B., Berkovsky, S., Quiroz, J. C., Laranjo, L., Tong, H. L., Rezazadegan, D., … Coiera, E. (2019). The Personalization of Conversational Agents in Health Care: Systematic Review. Journal Of Medical Internet Research, 21(11), 15 Pages. Doi:10.2196/15360

Kocaballi, A. B., Quiroz, J. C., Laranjo, L., Rezazadegan, D., Kocielnik, R., Clark, L., . . . Miner, A. (2020). Conversational Agents for Health and Wellbeing. In Chi’20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors In Computing Systems (Pp. 8 Pages). Honolulu, HI: Assoc Computing Machinery. Doi:10.1145/3334480.3375154

Miner, A. S., Laranjo, L., & Kocaballi, A. B. (2020). Chatbots In the Fight Against the Covid-19 Pandemic. Npj Digital Medicine, 3(1), 4 Pages. Doi:10.1038/S41746-020-0280-0

Yin, K., Laranjo, L., Tong, H. L., Lau, A. Y. S., Kocaballi, A. B., Martin, P., … Coiera, E. (2019). Context-Aware Systems for Chronic Disease Patients: Scoping Review. Journal Of Medical Internet Research, 21(6), 8 Pages. Doi:10.2196/10896

Laranjo, L., Dunn, A. G., Tong, H. L., Kocaballi, A. B., Chen, J., Bashir, R., … Coiera, E. (2018). Conversational Agents in Healthcare: A Systematic Review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 25(9), 1248-1258. Doi:10.1093/Jamia/Ocy072

Proactivity in Conversational Agents

Most conversational agents work in a reactive manner. This project focuses on proactive behaviour in conversational agents. A proactive conversational agent is one that can initiate conversations with users, instead of waiting for the user to do so. The aims include understanding the appropriateness, acceptability, and suitability of proactive conversational agents in different settings and problem areas.

Publications:

Behaviour Change Applications

Behaviour change techniques (BCTs) are increasingly being used to promote health and wellbeing. There are many applications for behaviour change techniques including: Weight loss, smoking cessation, exercise, diet, alcohol consumption, drug use, safe sex, mental health and stress management. This project aims to understand in what ways mobile technologies employing evidence-based BCTs facilitate desired and sustained changes in peoples’ behaviour.

Publications:

Laranjo, L., Ding, D., Heleno, B., Kocaballi, A. B., Quiroz, J. C., Tong, H. L., … Bates, D. W. (2021). Do Smartphone Applications and Activity Trackers Increase Physical Activity in Adults? Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis and Metaregression. British Journal of Sports Medicine. Doi:10.1136/Bjsports-2020-102892

Dao, K. P., De Cocker, K., Tong, H. L., Kocaballi, A. B., Chow, C., & Laranjo, L. (2021). Smartphone-Delivered Ecological Momentary Interventions Based on Ecological Momentary Assessments to Promote Health Behaviors: Systematic Review and Adapted Checklist for Reporting Ecological Momentary Assessment and Intervention Studies. JMIR Mhealth And Uhealth, 9(11), 20 Pages. Doi:10.2196/22890

Tong, H. L., Quiroz, J. C., Kocaballi, A. B., Fat, S. C. M., Dao, K. P., Gehringer, H., … Laranjo, L. (2021). Personalized Mobile Technologies for Lifestyle Behavior Change: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, And Meta-Regression. Preventive Medicine, 148, 12 Pages. Doi:10.1016/J.Ypmed.2021.106532

Supporting Working from Home Practices

This project aims to investigate how interactive technologies can support reflection about working from home (WFH). In many industries, both employers and employees struggle to find a new balance between personal and professional life. Reflection can help both, as it is core to learning, skill building and behaviours that foster productivity, growth and wellbeing. Current technologies supporting reflection predominantly have quantified views of reflection. We contribute to knowledge in technology design using participatory methodology and provide meaning to Australians reflecting on their WFH practices, through interactive experiences that are personalised to help them set their own goals, and fulfil their productivity and career needs.

Publications:

Kocaballi, A. B., & Núñez-Pacheco, C. (2018). Rethinking Context-Aware Computing to Support Reflective Engagement. In Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference, HCI 2018. Doi:10.14236/Ewic/Hci2018.89