P3‐404: Can a Smartphone‐Based Chatbot Engage Older Community Group Members? The Impact of Specialised Content

Abstract

Regular involvement in conversations is important for people with dementia to maintain confidence in communication abilities in the face of declining cognitive abilities. Our research team developed an Android smartphone application called Harlie (Human and Robot Language Interaction Experiment). Harlie can call individuals on a smartphone to have regular chats. In working towards an adaptable chatbot that can support rich and ongoing communication, community groups were engaged to test Harlie. Specialised content related to the nature of the group was added for each group together with five more generic topics. The specialised content was comprised of a knitting module for a knitting group (15 women aged 61-88 years participated) and a woodworking module for a Men’s Shed (19 men aged 53-82 participated). Harlie was programmed to randomly choose one topic at a time out of a repertoire of six total topics, including the specialised topic and five generic topis, such as ‘music’ or ‘good memories’. Participants were seated individually and shown how to chat with Harlie on a smartphone. Headphones were used and each participant spoke to Harlie for approximately 5 minutes. Audio and text recordings were securely saved to an online server for analysis by the research team and participants were encouraged to share feedback on the experience during a group discussion. The feedback on the experience of using Harlie was positive in both groups. While the knitting module was successful in prolonging conversational engagement, the woodworking module was not eliciting longer engagement for this specialised topic.