[Hoey 10]

Hoey, J., Leuty, V., & Mihailidis, A. (2010). A Tool to Promote Prolonged Engagement in Art Therapy : Design and Development from Arts Therapist Requirements Categories and Subject Descriptors. ASSETS 2010.

• abstract : a novel tool to increase the capacity of creative arts therapists to engage cognitively impaired older adults in creative activities (touch screen interface)
• uses decision theory to reason about what actions the agent can take to optimize over a user-specified utility function; abstract model of automated assistance based on the partially observable Markov decision process;
• possible to give non-technical users control over an intelligent assistant;
• inertia can be provided by the device to help with loss of focus - a therapist's inertial tool;
• techniques for tracking engagement and mood; use of facial expressions and gaze;
• defines categories of system actions or prompts based on their influence on engagement, their cost ti the user in terms of interruption and disturbances; interactivity of an action as the amount of involvement it requires from a user; highly interactive vs. mildly interactive; trade-off is that a very interactive prompt may get a disengaged user involved, but may be a disruptive action for an already engaged user, causing them to disengage;
• the POMDP tracks a belief state, a continuous measure of a person's engagement; if they are responsive to interactivity level of the action, effect of the action is to increase their engagement; PODMP must trade-off involvement and engagement against interactivity; classified into levels of involvement: interactive, active, intermittent, inactive; engaged can be yes/no/confused; respond can be yes or no;
• therapists showed approval of mapping the generic interactivity levels to the specific application prompts;
• therapists requested ability to pause the AI decision making process or experiment wit different settings throughout a single session; some felt uncomfortable trusting a computer to accurately measuring engagement;
• request for multi-touch functionality, intuitive interfacing system would allow clients to use the system with much more ease and less anxiety;
• request for tracking biological data;
• customizability: clients may externalize their engagement at different levels; one can adjust/tweak parameters the passivity level of the system, the activity level of the client, and the eye-contact level of the client;