Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
11-4-2025
Abstract
A variety of digital technologies have been used to support early childhood development (ECD) programs in low-income South African communities. Even though technology has provided opportunities to increase access to health interventions, the lack of trust and socio-economic constraints under which these tools would need to work pose complex challenges. We examine home visitors’ work processes, experiences, and preferences of a conversational agent to support their work of administering social-emotional well-being assessments to young children ages 0-5. Analysis of the results of focus groups with 51 home visitors indicates the need for designing conversational agents that support ECD in the cultural context of South African communities, and engaging through trust-building activities, which is essential for the sustainability of an ECD intervention. We identified that home visitors find it essential to engage in trust-building activities with caregivers through personal storytelling, community workshops, and empathetic communication. This allows home visitors to engage caregivers in using a conversational agent for their child’s social-emotional well-being assessments. Additionally, we provide key design considerations for the low-income South African community context by designing the conversational agent in local languages, cultural phrases and idioms, and to include visual elements to enhance literacy. We present design implications for designing conversational agents rooted in a foundation of trust and ways to incorporate storytelling approaches into conversational agents. This work advances the exploration of the types of complex challenges that can arise in resource-constrained settings by introducing new technical methods in innovative ways rather than refraining due to implementation and sustainability challenges.
Recommended Citation
Lucretia Williams, Elizabeth Ankrah, Catherine Draper, Caylee Cook, Franceli Cibrian, Jesus Armando Beltran Verdugo, Kimberley Lakes, and Gillian Hayes. 2025. Design Considerations for Conversational Agents to Assess the Social-emotional Well-being of Young Children in Low-Income South African Communities. In Proceedings of the 5th Biennial African Human Computer Interaction Conference (AfriCHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 37–49. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757232.3757235
Copyright
The authors
Included in
African Studies Commons, Child Psychology Commons, Health Services Research Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Other Computer Engineering Commons, Other Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons, Other Engineering Commons, Other Public Health Commons
Comments
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 5th Biennial African Human Computer Interaction Conference (AfriCHI '25) in 2025 following peer review. This article may not exactly replicate the final published version. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1145/3757232.3757235.