Authors:
Maria Beatriz Bastos
1
;
Ana Paula Cláudio
1
;
Isa Brito Félix
2
;
Mara Pereira Guerreiro
2
;
Maria Inês Carmo
1
and
João Balsa
1
Affiliations:
1
LASIGE, Dep. Informática, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
;
2
Nursing Research, Innovation and Development Centre of Lisbon (CIDNUR), Nursing School of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Conversational Agents, Ontologies, Behavior Change Techniques, Dialogue Platforms.
Abstract:
Departing from previous work on the use of well-established behavior change techniques in an mHealth intervention based on a conversational agent (CA), we propose in this contribution a new architecture for the design of behavior change CAs. This novel approach combines the use of an advanced natural language platform (Dialogflow) with the explicit representation, in an ontology, of how behavior change techniques can be operationalized. The integration of these two components is explained, as well as the most challenging aspect of using the advanced features of the platform in a way that allowed the agent to lead the dialogue flow, when needed. A successful proof of concept was built, which can be the basis for the development of advanced conversational agents, combining natural language tools with ontology-based knowledge representation.