Designing Multi-Modal Conversational Agents for the Kitchen with Older Adults: A Participatory Design Study

Conversational agents (CA) are increasingly used to manage and coordinate household chores and everyday activities at home. However, these technologies should be adaptive to age-specific characteristics in order to be considered beneficial for the ageing population. This study presents a participatory design of a conversational agent to provide cognitive support in recipe following and nutrition advice for adults aged 65 and over. Through a qualitative thematic analysis, the study explores older adults’ expectations, interactions and experiences with the agent in order to identify age-specific challenges of interacting with CAs. Data consists of a participatory design workshop with eight older adults (aged 65 and over), followed by a Wizard of Oz study with ten older adults interacting with the agent in the kitchen environment in a laboratory setting. Results demonstrate that older adults consider conversational agents as beneficial for providing personalised recipe recommendations, advising the user to choose appropriate ingredients and reminding them of their dietary intake. When interacting with the agent older adults displayed challenges with confirmation and repetition, questioning and correcting, the lack of conversational responses, and difficulties in hearing and understanding the multi-modal interaction. Older adults experience agents as collaborators, but not as conversational partners. The study concludes that the accessibility and inclusiveness of conversational agents regarding voice interaction could be improved by further developing participatory methods with older adults.