User Centered Virtual Coaching for Older Adults at Home Using SMART Goal Plans and I-Change Model

• Main Authors: Andoni Beristain Iraola, Roberto Álvarez Sánchez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
• Series: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• Subjects: virtual coaching; data visualization; incremental machine learning; feature engineering; self-management; healthy and active aging
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6868
• ISSN: 1661-7827; 1660-4601

Preventive care and telemedicine are expected to play an important role in reducing the impact of an increasingly aging global population while increasing the number of healthy years. Virtual coaching is a promising research area to support this process. This paper presents a user-centered virtual coach for older adults at home to promote active and healthy aging and independent living. It supports behavior change processes for improving on cognitive, physical, social interaction and nutrition areas using specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-limited (SMART) goal plans, following the I-Change behavioral change model. Older adults select and personalize which goal plans to join from a catalog designed by domain experts. Intervention delivery adapts to user preferences and minimizes intrusiveness in the user’s daily living using a combination of a deterministic algorithm and incremental machine learning model. The home becomes an augmented reality environment, using a combination of projectors, cameras, microphones and support sensors, where common objects are used for projection and sensed. Older adults interact with this virtual coach in their home in a natural way using speech and body gestures on projected user interfaces with common objects at home. This paper presents the concept from the older adult and the caregiver perspectives. Then, it focuses on the older adult view, describing the tools and processes available to foster a positive behavior change process, including a discussion about the limitations of the current implementation.