"Listen to Music, Listen to Yourself": Design of a Conversational Agent to Support Self-Awareness While Listening to Music

Wanling Cai, Yucheng Jin, Xianglin Zhao, Li Chen

Abstract: Music can affect the human brain and cognition. Melodies and lyrics that resonate with us can awaken our inner feelings and thoughts; being in touch with these feelings and expressing them allow us to understand ourselves better and increase our self-awareness. To support self-awareness elicited by music, we designed a novel conversational agent (CA) that guides users to become self-aware and express their thoughts when they listen to music. Moreover, we investigated two prominent design factors in the CA, proactive guidance and social information. We then conducted a 2x2 between-subjects experiment (N = 90) to investigate how the two design factors affect self-awareness, user acceptance, and mental well-being. The results of a five-day user study reveal that high proactive guidance and social information increased self-awareness, but high proactive guidance tended to influence perceived autonomy and usefulness negatively. Further, users’ subjective feedback revealed the CA’s potential to support mental well-being.