The PI’s research team will use a human-centered approach to design, build, and evaluate conversational care technologies that scaffold meaningful care discussions between older adults and their informal caregivers
Awardee Organization(s): University of Michigan
Principal Investigator(s): Robin Brewer, PhD
Official Project Title: Conversational Care Technologies
AITC Partner: PennAITech
Website(s): www.umich.edu, www.si.umich.edu
This project focuses on designing and developing conversational care technologies for older adults and their caregivers. In prior work, we surveyed informal caregivers and older adult care receivers to understand their care routines. Survey findings showed how nearly 20% of care partners used voice assistants in their homes, signaling an opportunity to extend research on older adults’ conversational technology use to include care partners. Next, we conducted a diary study and interviews with caregivers and care receivers to investigate gaps in care interactions and conversations. We found that care receivers experienced more communication frustrations than caregivers and that older adult caregivers wanted more opportunities to influence their care routines.
In this project, we will use these findings to develop in-home conversational technologies that use prompts to structure care conversations between older adults and their caregivers.
We contribute a nuanced dyadic perspective to care relationships as most care research focuses solely on caregiver perspectives. We also extend conversational technology research beyond information seeking to include more social uses by developing conversational technology applications with mainstream voice technologies (e.g., Amazon Alexa) to support improved care relationships, social and emotional well-being, and quality of life.