Mochi., a New Chatbot Life Coach, Aims to Help Users Maintain Well-being and Productivity During the Pandemic

在Covid-19流行病的新正常情况下，在工作生活平衡，福祉和生产力奋斗？见面Mochi.，由Angelora Cooper'22，Adhel Geng'22和Tolulope Oshinowo '23（Olin Engineering学院）开发的Chatbot Life教练Wellesley College Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab.

Mochi.lets users track details of their daily lives, like how they spend their time, what emotions they experience, and the degree to which they accomplish their goals. The chatbot coaches the user by providing prompts and asking them to consider how they feel about their day, to take stock of their productivity, and to encourage opportunities for reflection, such as asking users about their stress levels following meetings. The interface design is similar to a calendar, and it summarizes all the data collected throughout the day and week. The team hopes that having access to a visual display of their data will help users understand themselves better, see trends in their work lives and in their well-being, and figure out what they require to feel most fulfilled.

Cooper，Geng和Oshinowo开发了Mochi作为2020科学中心夏季研究计划的一部分，与之合作Orit Shaer，1966年的计算机科学副教授。Shaer’s research team in the HCI Lab, which she founded and directs, has been exploring the future of work in automated cars as part of a collaborative National Science Foundation grant with the University of New Hampshire, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, and University of Washington. But the COVID-19 pandemic presented an urgent need to support workers away from the office, and it provided a unique opportunity for the researchers to expand their work to home environments and examine the needs of information workers over an extended time.

“摩奇被设计为一个工具，帮助我们收集有关在家中工作的数据，同时帮助用户反思自己的数据并制定策略以提高他们的福祉和生产力，”瑞吉说。该实验室从NSF获得了额外的资金来项目。

以下是Mochi工作方式：每天早晚，用户都会发送登记入住通知，允许它们启动与Mochi对话。早上办理登机手续询问用户如何睡觉前一天晚上，他们对他们之前的一天感觉如何，如果他们想审查他们的一些目标来达到一天。晚上办理登机手续问当天希望如何看待他们的生产力和当天的统计数据。

Additionally, Mochi periodically sends prompts that ask the user how they are doing at the moment, give them an opportunity to assess their productivity, and review the events in their Google calendar. The team designed the check-ins to feel like a chat with a friend throughout the day, and they allow Mochi to assemble an in-depth image of how the user feels over time.

“I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon of humans treating machines like living things, both as a psychology major and a sci-fi fan, so working on this chatbot was in part a way to explore that,” said Cooper, who worked on designing and writing the chatbot’s personality, dialogue, and interaction options with the user. “This project also gained a new dimension for me as we began to comprehend the extent of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of everyone living in isolation. Not only could a chatbot potentially help to alleviate feelings of isolation, but the data that Mochi collects from the user could help us gain an understanding of exactly how people have been affected by the pandemic.”

Mochi的名字是移动人类因素研究领域的点头ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, commonly called CHI. The students said they wanted a “personable” name to “convey the warmth and friendliness of the bot personality we are developing.” They also planned to use emoji scales “to provide users with an easy and fun way to answer questions, and Mochi sounds a bit reminiscent of emoji,” they said.

The next steps for Mochi include improvements to the way users interact with the data the chatbot collects. “In the next stage of this research, we strive to develop a visualization tool that reflects the user’s data in a simple and engaging way. Our focus is on crafting an interface that encourages easy interaction with one’s own personal data in order to facilitate lifestyle changes, feel satisfied, accomplish goals,” said Julia Burmeister ’18, one of the HCI Lab’s research fellows.

“Creating a service for people other than myself and those in circles that I inhabit has opened my eyes to some of the implicit biases that I have,” Oshinowo, the Olin student, said. Oshinowo developed the chatbot’s fulfillment messages to any given user request, and worked on how to store and structure data collected from the user. “With the development of Mochi, accessibility and understandability were major factors that I needed to consider at every step of the development process,” Oshinowo said. “Taking the user experience into account is something that I will always try to remember moving forward—both in the classroom and out of it.”

“Working on the chatbot with its focus on well-being was definitely an influence on new habits I tried to create as I take courses remotely this semester,” Geng said. “I have remembered to take time off for myself to check on my well-being, and it has also helped me think of others during this pandemic. I have been checking up on my family and friends more.” Geng, who worked primarily on the design aspects of Mochi, creating numerous mockups with the team’s feedback, said she learned a lot about iterative design.

现在，Mochi仅适用于家庭工作的信息工人并注册瑞恩的学习，但团队希望在稍后阶段将公众作为在线应用程序。“我相信，在不久的将来，我们将通过语音或文本，定期看到工人与聊天助理助理互动，”瑞格说。“大流行后，聊天吧将继续帮助工人管理他们的时间，以便他们平衡家庭和工作生活，与其他工人更加无缝互动，并通过教练，反思和意识改善他们的幸福。”