Internet-based tailored virtual human health intervention to promote colorectal cancer screening: design guidelines from two user studies

To influence user behaviors, Internet-based virtual humans (VH) have been used to deliver health interventions. When developing Internet-based VH health interventions, the developers have to make several design decisions on VH’s appearance, role, language, or medium. The design decisions can affect the outcomes of the Internet-based VH health intervention. To help make design decisions, the current paper presents design guidelines drawn from two studies. The two studies used Internet-based VH health intervention to promote colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. The two studies examined the influence of visual design and the influence of the information medium on user intentions to pursue more health information. In the first study, the qualitative analysis of the focus group (n = 73 users in 13 focus groups) transcripts shows that the VH’s visual realism, the VH’s healthcare role, and the presence of a local healthcare provider’s logo influenced the user perceptions of the intervention. The findings from the focus groups were used to iterate the intervention and derive design guidelines. In the second study (n = 1400), the analysis of online surveys from users after the VH-based intervention showed that to positively influence the user intentions to pursue the health topic further, the results recommend the use of an animated VH to deliver health information compared to other mediums of information delivery, such as text. The analysis also shows that very few user comments were related to the VH’s appearance after visual design iterations in the second study. The design guidelines from the two studies can be used by developers when using VH-based interventions to positively influence users’ intention to change behaviors.