| dc.description.abstract | There are many self-help therapies around, some are written in the form of
books while others are internet-based. These forms share similarities but they
also have their differences. One of these differences is the transfer of informa-
tion. Where books only convey information one-way, internet-based therapy
allows for interactivity between therapist and client. An e-coach is an exam-
ple of a mobile agent that coaches their clients (coachees) through a process
of behaviour change. These e-coaches mostly focus on a single therapy domain
and are developed specifically for that. However, the creation of these e-coaches
requires extensive technical knowledge and programming skills. Throwing up a
barrier for writers of self-help books to develop their own e-coach.
We propose a framework for an authoring tool (CoachLab), that allows au-
thors of self-help treatments to develop e-coaches without technical knowledge.
CoachLab is unique in its underlying generic framework that allows authors to
generate conversation-based e-coaches for all therapy domains by only provid-
ing therapy specific variables. For this research we focused on the development
and generation of conversations. These conversations were created by analysing
existing self-help books and e-coaches.
Since CoachLab is based on conversations, it is important for authors to
convey their message properly. Even though CoachLab enables authors to gen-
erate these conversations based on specified variables, authors should be able
to adapt them to their own insights. This should again be possible without any
programming knowledge. The built-in dialogue editor allows authors to adapt
existing and create fully new conversations. To conclude, we created a gener-
alising framework for creating conversation-based e-coaches based on existing
therapies and processes, along with an editing tool that removes the technical
threshold for authors designing those conversations. | |
