"A Second Voice": Investigating Opportunities and Challenges for Interactive Voice Assistants to Support Home Health Aides

Home health aides are a vulnerable group of frontline caregivers who provide personal and medically-oriented care in patients' homes. Their work is difficult and unpredictable, involving a mix of physical and emotional labor as they adapt to patients' changing needs. Our paper presents an exploratory, qualitative study with 32 participants, that investigates design opportunities for Interactive Voice Assistants (IVAs) to support aides' essential care work. We explore challenges and opportunities for IVAs to (1) fill gaps in aides' access to information and care coordination, (2) assist with decision making and task completion, (3) advocate on behalf of aides, and (4) provide emotional support. We then discuss key implications of our work, including how materiality may impact perceived ownership and usage of IVAs, the need to carefully consider tensions around surveillance, accountability, data collection, and reporting, and the challenges of centering aides as essential workers in complex home health care contexts.

• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.

Voice assistant, AI, intelligent agent, home health care, home health aides, community health, future of work.