How do smokers want to quit with a virtual coach?

Watch this 5-minute video on user needs for quitting smoking with a virtual coach: www.youtube.com/watch.

To better understand smokers' needs for quitting with a virtual coach (i.e., a chatbot), Nele Albers, Dr. ir. Willem-Paul Brinkman and Prof. dr. Mark Neerincx conducted a study in which 671 smokers interacted with a text-based virtual coach in up to five conversational sessions spread over at least nine days. In each session, the virtual coach assigned people a new preparatory activity for quitting smoking or becoming more physically active, such as noting and ranking reasons for quitting smoking. Based on triangulating 1) people's experiences with their activities, 2) their barriers and motivators for doing their activities, 3) their characteristics (e.g., age, physical activity identity), 4) their views on videos of interaction scenarios, and 5) findings from the literature, the team found 14 main themes that describe user needs. These findings have now been published in the article “Users' needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study” in the journal PeerJ: 10.7717/peerj.13824.