ABSTRACT
Recently, chatbots have been deployed in health care in various ways such as providing educational information, and monitoring and triaging symptoms. However, they can be ineffective when they are designed without a careful consideration of the cultural context of the users, especially for marginalized groups. Chatbots designed without cultural understanding may result in loss of trust and disengagement of the user. In this paper, through an interview study, we attempt to understand how chatbots can be better designed for Black American communities within the context of COVID-19. Along with the interviews, we performed design activities with 18 Black Americans that allowed them to envision and design their own chatbot to address their needs and challenges during the pandemic. We report our findings on our participants' needs for chatbots' roles and features, and their challenges in using chatbots. We then present design implications for future chatbot design for the Black American population. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has been known to have a disproportionate impact on African Americans in the United States. Although studies have been conducted on the reasons for this disparity, there has been less focus on how the African American population sought trustworthy health information using technology. This is important because African Americans' mistrust of the medical system has been suggested as a possible reason for the disproportionate impact. Therefore, we conducted interviews with 18 African Americans with chronic conditions to discover what types of challenges they faced while searching for trustworthy information on COVID-19 and the strategies they used to overcome these challenges. We found that participants actively evaluated the credibility of different information sources, searched for first-hand information from people they could relate to, and tried to avoid or reduce media consumption to prevent information overload. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
African Americans have faced health disparities in terms of access to health care and treatment of illnesses. The novel coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic exacerbates those disparities caused by limited access to medical care and healthy lifestyles, vulnerability to misleading information, and mistrust of the medical profession, all of which disproportionately affect the African American population in terms of infection and mortality. Conversational agents (CAs) are a technological intervention with the potential to narrow the disparities because they make health care more accessible, are effective in disseminating health information among a population with low health literacy, and can increase users' trust in health information. However, designing CAs for this population presents challenges with regard to embodying the African American culture into CAs and addressing privacy and security concerns. This commentary discusses some advantages and challenges of using CAs to help African Americans protect themselves against coronavirus disease 2019, and calls for more research in this area. © 2020 ACM.