Conversational AI for digital mindfulness with older adults

Mindfulness has become a common self-care practice to improve mental well-being, decrease symptoms of stress and improve relaxation and concentration.  Mindfulness can be defined as a state that can be achieved through focusing one’s awareness on the present moment and environment (American Psychological Association). Mindfulness-based interventions are used as a prevention and treatment for depression, anxiety, stress and other psychiatric disorders, and they can be practiced through various exercises and assignments aimed at developing mindfulness through formal practice in daily life. 

This project aims to investigate the use of a voice-based mobile application for digital mindfulness in older adults’ daily life and design a conversational application for digital mindfulness with older adults aged 65 and over. Mobile applications have become common technology to collect data of user’s physical activity, nutrition and sleep, but the long-term user engagement with these technologies still remains low.  Conversational applications in the form of chatbots or virtual assistants can decrease many technology adoption barriers that older adults typically experience with digital technologies and improve the interactivity and user engagement with the device. Therefore, conversational interaction modalities provide a new possibility to develop interactive technologies for digital mindfulness that better meet the needs and interests of older adults.  

First, the project conducts a user study for a voice-based mobile application to understand older adults’ mindfulness practice, and identify development areas for improving interactivity of the application with older adults. The user study investigates older adults’ previous use of mobile applications in health monitoring, their perceived mental well-being, mindfulness and stress symptoms. 

Second, the project conducts a participatory design of a conversational application for digital mindfulness through developing a dialogue model for mindfulness-based interventions with older adults.  The project explores and develops the suitability of different interaction modalities (voice, sound, music) and Large Language Models as a part of digital mindfulness, and the user interface of the application with older adults.    

Research team:

Lucy McCarren, PhD student, KTH
Ulrika Eriksson, Research assistant, KTH 
Yuqi Sun, Master student, KTH
Magnus Thulin, Master student, KTH
Sanna Kuoppamäki, Assistant Professor, KTH 

Conference presentations and societal impact:

• Lucy McCarren, Sanna Kuoppamäki (2024). Enhancing older adults' well-being through converstional application for digital mindfulness. Nordic Sociological Conference, University of Linköping. August 14-16, 2024.
• Lucy McCarren (2024). The use of a voice-based mobile application to facilitate self-perceived bodily and emotional well-being among older adults. Socio-gerontechnology Network Annual Meeting. Technical University of Vienna, 19-20 September, 2024. 
• Sanna Kuoppamäki (2024). Relationality in dialogues with conversational AI companions and older adults. Socio-gerontechnology Network Annual Meeting. Technical University of Vienna, 19-20 September, 2024. 
• Lucy McCarren, Sanna Kuoppamäki (2024). Utvecklingen av en konversationsapplikation för mindfulnessträning med äldre vuxna. Välfärdsteknikmässan, Stockholm Stad. 26 maj, 2024

Master thesis:

• Magnus Thulin (2024). Investigating an Age-Inclusive Medical AI Assistant with Large Language Models: User Evaluation with Older Adults. KTH, School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health (CBH), Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems.

Research communication:

• Exploring AI-mediated mindfulness practice to promote older adults' well-being (Blog post, 2024-02-13)
• Delta i mindfulness-forskning på KTH (Blog post, 2024-02-16)