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BACKGROUND: Melanoma is common with increasing incidence. Guidelines recommend monthly total skin self-examinations (TSSEs) by survivors to detect recurrent and new primary melanomas. TSSE is underperformed despite evidence of benefit. OBJECTIVE: This study compares the effect on psychological well-being and TSSE practice of a self-directed digital intervention with treatment as usual in patients treated for a first stage 0 to IIC primary cutaneous melanoma within the preceding 60 months. METHODS: This randomized clinical trial was conducted at 2 UK National Health Service hospitals (Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Grampian, and Addenbrooke's, Cambridge). Adults (≥18 years) diagnosed with a first 0 to IIC primary cutaneous melanoma were randomized to receive Achieving Self-directed Integrated Cancer Aftercare (ASICA), a tablet-based intervention prompting and supporting TSSE in survivors of melanoma, or to usual care. The hypothesis was that ASICA would increase TSSE practice in users affected by melanoma and compared with controls without affecting psychological well-being. The main primary outcomes were melanoma worry (Melanoma Worry Scale), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and quality of life (EQ-5D-5L) as well as secondary outcomes collected using postal questionnaires 3, 6, and 12 months following randomization. RESULTS: A total of 240 recruits were randomized (1:1) into the ASICA (n=121, 50.4%) or control (n=119, 49.6%) groups. There were no significant differences between groups for melanoma worry at 12 months (mean difference: 0.12, 95% CI -0.6 to 0.84; P=.74), 3 months (0.23, 95% CI -0.31 to 0.78; P=.40), or 6 months (-0.1, 95% CI -0.7 to 0.51; P=.76). The ASICA group had lower anxiety scores at 12 months (-0.54, 95% CI -1.31 to 0.230; P=.17), 3 months (-0.13, 95% CI -0.79 to 0.54; P=.71), and significantly at 6 months (-1.00, 95% CI -1.74 to -0.26; P=.009). Depression scores were similar, being lower at 12 months (-0.44, 95% CI -1.

UMAP '21, Contains fulltext : 236516.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

UMAP '21, Contains fulltext : 236519.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

The 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP'21), 21 juni 2021, Item does not contain fulltext, The Personalized Intelligent Conversational Agents workshop focuses on both long-term engaging spoken dialogue systems and text-based chatbots, as well as conversational recommender systems. The goal of the workshop is to stimulate discussion around problems, challenges, possible solutions and research directions regarding the exploitation of natural language processing and machine learning techniques to learn user features and to use them to personalize the dialogue in the next generation of intelligent conversational agents.

UMAP '21, Contains fulltext : 236608.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

UMAP '21, Contains fulltext : 236551.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

UMAP '21, Contains fulltext : 236571.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

In the previous ten years, music streaming platforms have grown in popularity and generated significant revenue for the music business. They offer a variety of functions, one of which is the ability to create music playlists. The purpose of this study was to look into how consumers behave during this process as well as when listening to music. Aside from that, the study looked into listeners' cultural backgrounds and how they influenced the aforementioned aspects. People's birth country was linked to their cultural background in this study. The goal of distributing a questionnaire-based survey was to collect replies from consumers from various nations. Following the collecting of nearly 350 responses, 276 responses from Greece and the Netherlands were analyzed. There appeared to be differences in the preferred music styles and the use of music services. However, during the creation of a music playlist, the behaviour was nearly the same. The mood of the listeners, as well as the music genre and artist of the songs, were the most important variables in generating a list that would provoke a shared sentiment when played. Furthermore, rather than relying on the recommendation algorithms, many of the participants choose to create their own music playlists and pick songs one by one for their hand-crafted playlists. Proposed ideas for future recommender system designs discuss this non-preference. In addition, suggested features for music platforms based on the study's findings are presented.

The algorithmic personalisation of online information can cause users to end up in so-called filter bubbles, which limit exposure to opposing viewpoints. Dutch teenagers are not aware of this online personalisation, and schools struggle to educate them on this. To help teachers and educators address the effects and dangers of online personalisation, the anti-filter bubble application project was established by an interdisciplinary research team. In this study, employing an iterative user-centred approach by interviewing students and teachers, I developed and tested two activities and an overall structure for the application. Additionally, I performed an evaluation study using one of the prototypes, investigating the influence of the presence of a physical artefact on knowledge gains and students’ experience of that activity. Results showed that while students and teachers have competing interests, the presence of a physical object is likely to improve the subsequent class discussion. Along with the prototypes, recommendations for future development, and the evaluation study, I also contribute recommendations for future HCI research and developments with teenagers.

UMAP '21: 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization Utrecht (Utrecht, Netherlands, 21-25 June 2021), Item does not contain fulltext, Interacting with chatbots has become ubiquitous nowadays. Nevertheless, conversational agents often remain unable to reliably succeed in social contexts, which negatively influences users' experience and prevents them from exploiting the technology's full potential. To improve user experience and subsequent trust-formation in chatbots only very little attention has been paid to the active involvement of the user and with that to customization options. Employing a preregistered experimental 1x2 between-subjects study design (N = 171) this study explores an alternative approach to the typical one-chatbot-fits-all solution and investigates the potential of active user-based chatbot customization for the development of trust in chatbots. While customization had no direct effect on trust, anthropomorphism was identified as a significant mediator. The chatbot's interpersonal communicational competence was not affected by customization, yet it did predict trust. Exploratory analyses of participants’ feedback point towards the importance of individual differences between users and generally show a positive impact of customization on the overall chatbot experience.

There is a growing use of intelligent systems to support human decision-making across several domains. Trust in intelligent systems, however, is pivotal in shaping their widespread adoption. Little is currently understood about how trust in an intelligent system evolves over time and how it is mediated by the accuracy of the system. We aim to address this knowledge gap by exploring trust formation over time and its relation to system accuracy. To that end, we built an intelligent house recommendation system and carried out a longitudinal study consisting of 201 participants across 3 sessions in a week. In each session, participants were tasked with finding housing that fit a given set of constraints using a conventional web interface that reflected a typical housing search website. Participants could choose to use an intelligent decision support system to help them find the right house. Depending on the group, participants received a variation of accurate or inaccurate advice from the intelligent system throughout each session. We measured trust using a trust in automation scale at the end of each session. We found evidence suggesting that trust development is a slow process that evolves over multiple sessions, and that first impressions of the intelligent system are highly influential. Our results echo earlier research on trust formation in single session interactions, corroborating that reliability, validity, predictability, and dependability all influence trust formation. We also found that the age of the participants and their affinity with technology had an effect on their trust in the intelligent system. Our findings highlight the importance of first impressions and improvement of system accuracy for trust development. Hence, our study is an important first step in understanding trust development, breakdown of trust, and trust repair over multiple system interactions, informing improved system design.

BACKGROUND: Melanoma is common; 15,906 people in the UK were diagnosed with melanoma in 2015 and incidence has increased fivefold in 30 years. Melanoma affects old and young people, with poor prognosis once metastatic. UK guidelines recommend people treated for cutaneous melanoma receive extended outpatient, hospital follow up to detect recurrence or new primaries. Such follow up of the growing population of melanoma survivors is burdensome for both individuals and health services. Follow up is important since approximately 20% of patients with early-stage melanoma experience a recurrence and 4-8% develop a new primary; the risk of either is highest in the first 5 years. Achieving Self-directed Integrated Cancer Aftercare (ASICA) is a digital intervention to increase total-skin-self-examination (TSSE) by people treated for melanoma, with usual follow up. METHODS: We aim to recruit 240 adults with a previous first-stage 0-2C primary cutaneous melanoma, from secondary care in North-East Scotland and the East of England. Participants will be randomised to receive the ASICA intervention (a tablet-based digital intervention to prompt and support TSSE) or control group (treatment as usual). Patient-reported and clinical data will be collected at baseline, including the modified Melanoma Worry Scale (MWS), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADs), the EuroQoL 5-dimension 5-level questionnaire (EQ-5D-5 L), and questions about TSSE practice, intentions, self-efficacy and planning. Participants will be followed up by postal questionnaire at 3, 6 and 12 months following randomization, along with a 12-month review of clinical data. The primary timepoint for outcome analyses will be12 months after randomisation. DISCUSSION: If the ASICA intervention improves the practice of TSSE in those affected by melanoma, this may lead to improved psychological well-being and earlier detection of recurrent and new primary melanoma. This could impact both patients and National Health

OBJECTIVES: To develop a digital intervention to prompt, support, and respond to the outcomes of total skin self-examinations (TSSEs) at home by people treated for cutaneous melanoma. DESIGN: A complex intervention development study. SETTING: Northeast Scotland. PARTICIPANTS: Semistructured scoping interviews; people previously treated for cutaneous melanoma (n=21). Pilot testing: people treated for melanoma stages 0-2C (n=20); general practitioners (n=6); and a nurse specialist in dermatology (n=1). INTERVENTION: A tablet-based digital intervention designed to prompt and support TSSEs comprising instructional videos and electronic reporting (including photographs) to a clinical nurse specialist in dermatology, with subsequent clinical triage. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Qualitative assessment of intervention feasibility and acceptability, and quantitative assessment of intentions and confidence to perform TSSEs in pilot participants. RESULTS: The majority of pilot participants were strongly positive and adhered well to the intervention (n=15), with 7 of these reporting symptoms of concern at some point during the 6-month pilot. 4 patients complied intermittently, 3 reporting skin problems at least once during the pilot, and 1 withdrew. 2 patients underwent skin surgery as a result of participating in the pilot, with 1 diagnosed as having a recurrent melanoma and the other, a benign lesion. A number of practical issues to improve the usability of the intervention were identified. The proportion of participants reporting intention to check their skin at least monthly increased during the intervention as did confidence to conduct a skin check. CONCLUSIONS: People previously treated for cutaneous melanoma are prepared to use digital technology to support them in conducting TSSE. An intervention has been developed which is practical, effective and safe, and after addressing minor practical issues, could now be evaluated for clinical outcomes in a randomised

This article presents research conducted to establish how information is shared across the personal social network in the sensitive context of a health crisis. We worked with parents of very sick babies who were cared for in a hospital's Neonatal Unit (NNU). Through a combination of interviews, a focus group, and surveys, we developed a user model of the information that parents wanted to share, and how they adapted this information to individual recipients. We then developed a prototype software tool which created adaptive updates for members of the parents' social network. The updates contained summaries of large volumes of complex medical data about the baby, nonmedical information about the parents, and practical information about the hospital. Updates were automatically adapted to individual members of parents' social networks, based on our user model. The tool was evaluated in a large NNU in the United Kingdom with parents of babies who were currently being cared for in the unit. We found that parents adapted the information that they shared about themselves and their babies based on the emotional proximity of their network members. They gave most detail to those who were emotionally closest to them and least to those who were less close. Parents also adapted information content to the recipient's tendency to worry and empathize. Two adaptive strategies were deployed by parents, (a) benign deceit - not telling the whole truth - and (b) promotion of empathetic members of the social network to a higher level of emotional proximity, so that they were given more information. We generated a number of directions for future work, and issues to consider around designing adaptive mediated communications systems for sensitive contexts. These include the potential to generalize our model to other medical contexts and considerations to apply when deliberately designing deceit into adaptive systems. © Copyright Taylor & Francis.

We present an approach for propagation of user interests in ontology- based user models taking into account the properties declared for the concepts in the ontology. Starting from initial user feedback on an object, we calculate user interest in this particular object and its properties and further propagate user interest to other objects in the ontology, similar or related to the initial object. The similarity and relatedness of objects depends on the number of properties they have in common and their corresponding values. The approach we propose can support finer recommendation modalities, considering the user interest in the objects, as well as in singular properties of objects in the recommendation process. We tested our approach for interest propagation with a real adaptive application and obtained an improvement with respect to IS-A-propagation of interest values.

Personalized electronic program guides help users overcome information overload in the TV and video domain by exploiting recommender systems that automatically compile lists of novel and diverse video assets, based on implicitly or explicitly defined user preferences. In this context, we assume that user preferences can be specified by program genres (documentary, sports, ...) and that an asset can be labeled by one or more program genres, thus allowing an initial and coarse preselection of potentially interesting assets. As these assets may come from various sources, program genre labels may not be consistent among these sources, or not even be given at all, while we assume that each asset has a possibly short textual description. In this paper, we tackle this problem by considering whether those textual descriptions can be effectively used to automatically retrieve the most related TV shows for a specific program genre. More specifically, we compare a statistical approach called logistic regression with an enhanced version of the commonly used vector space model, called random indexing, where the latter is extended by means of a negation operator based on quantum logic. We also apply a new feature generation technique based on explicit semantic analysis for enriching the textual description associated to a TV show with additional features extracted from Wikipedia. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

This paper reports on three studies into social presence cues which were carried out in the context of the NECA (Net-environment for Embodied Emotional Conversational Agents) project and the EPOCH network. The first study concerns the generation of referring expressions. We adopted an existing algorithm for generating referring expressions such that it could run according to an egocentric and a neutral strategy. In an evaluation study, we found that the two strategies were correlated with the perceived friendliness of the speaker. In the second and the third study, we evaluated the gestures that were generated by the NECA system. In this paper, we briefly summarize the most salient results of these two studies. They concern the effect of gestures on perceived quality of speech and information retention., QC 20141215