Designing Chatbots with Black Americans with Chronic Conditions: Overcoming Challenges against COVID-19

Recently, chatbots have been deployed in health care in various ways such as providing educational information, and monitoring and triaging symptoms. However, they can be ineffective when they are designed without a careful consideration of the cultural context of the users, especially for marginalized groups. Chatbots designed without cultural understanding may result in loss of trust and disengagement of the user. In this paper, through an interview study, we attempt to understand how chatbots can be better designed for Black American communities within the context of COVID-19. Along with the interviews, we performed design activities with 18 Black Americans that allowed them to envision and design their own chatbot to address their needs and challenges during the pandemic. We report our findings on our participants’ needs for chatbots’ roles and features, and their challenges in using chatbots. We then present design implications for future chatbot design for the Black American population.