CareJournal: A Voice-Based Conversational Agent for Supporting Care Communications

Effective communication between older adult care recipients and unpaid caregivers is essential to both care partners’ well-being. To understand communication in care relationships, we conducted a two-part study with older adult care recipients and caregivers. First, we conducted a two-week diary study to gain insight into care-related communication challenges. While caregivers discussed the benefits of emotional attachment, care recipients expressed concerns about emotional fluctuation and losing autonomy. These findings, along with literature on self-disclosure and conversational scaffolding informed our design of CareJournal—a voice-based conversational agent that supports care-related disclosure between care partners. We evaluated CareJournal with 40 care partners to inform future design considerations and learn more about their communication practices. Our findings highlight the impact of distance and tensions between care and independence, providing insight into how care partners imagine computer-mediated care communication impacting their relationships.