Council of Coaches - A Novel Holistic Behavior Change Coaching Approach

Harm Op den Akker (1, 2) , Rieks Op den Akker (2) , Tessa Beinema (1) , Oresti Banos (2) , Dirk Heylen (3) , Bjørn Bedsted (4) , Alison Pease (5) , Catherine Pelachaud (6, 7) , Vicente Traver Salcedo (8) , Sofoklis Kyriazakos (9) , Hermie Hermens (2, 1)

1 Roessingh Research and Development
2 University of Twente
3 Human Media Interaction
4 Danish Board of Technology Foundation
5 University of Dundee
6 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
7 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique
8 ITACA
9 Aarhus University [Aarhus]

A modern way of life needs a modern way of coaching. Despite the proliferation of ICT solutions for personalized health care, there is still no easy way to provide older adults with integrated coaching services. In this paper we introduce the concept of Council of Coaches — a radically new virtual coaching concept based on multiple autonomous, embodied virtual coaches, which form together a personal council that fulfills the needs of older adults in an integrated way. In this concept, coaching takes the form of an open dialog in which clients co-construct together with a selected number of coaches their own plans to go for a healthier lifestyle. Virtual coaches are presented to users by means of embodied conversational social characters. We discuss technical and social challenges on the path towards realizing the Council of Coaches concept, a radically new view of health coaching that involves the state of the art in human-computer interaction, natural dialogue, and argumentation tec hnology.

Keywords: Virtual Coaching; Behavior Change; Embodied Agents

Domains: Human-Computer Interaction [cs.HC]

Harm Op den Akker, Rieks Op den Akker, Tessa Beinema, Oresti Banos, Dirk Heylen, et al.. Council of Coaches - A Novel Holistic Behavior Change Coaching Approach. 4th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health, Mar 2018, Funchal, Portugal. pp.219-226, ⟨10.5220/0006787702190226⟩. ⟨hal-02382709⟩