Co-designing Human–Chatbot Interaction for Various Healthcare Purposes: Considering Chatbots’ Social Characteristics and Communication Modalities

The last decade has witnessed the blooming growth of healthcare chatbots in behavior interventions, elderly care, healthcare education, online diagnosis, and elsewhere. To meet the users’ expectations and preferences, there is a need to investigate how to design social characteristics and communication modalities for healthcare chatbots serving different healthcare scenarios. This study introduces a co-design approach to address the challenges and uncertainties faced by users in virtual healthcare environments. By engaging users in an early design phase, the results provide insights into their attitudes and preferences for healthcare chatbots. It indicated that in different healthcare scenarios, users have varying psychological needs and considerations regarding the social characteristics and communication modalities of medical chatbots. Five kinds of healthcare chatbots are summarized: patient support services, health lifestyle and daily management, telemedicine and virtual health, emotional and mental health support, and assistance in medical work and research. Guidelines are proposed to inform the design of these chatbots, which can offer empirical support and practical guidance for future healthcare chatbot design.