Studying Self-Care with Generative AI Tools: Lessons for Design
Authors: 
Tara Capel, 
Bernd Ploderer, Filip Bircanin, Simon Hanmer, Jamie Paige Yates, Jiaxuan Wang, Kai Ling Khor, Tuck Wah Leong, 
Greg Wadley, Michelle NewcombAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 1620 - 1637
Abstract
The rise of generative AI presents new opportunities for the understanding and practice of self-care through its capability to generate varied content, including self-care suggestions via text and images, and engage in dialogue with users over time. However, there are also concerns about accuracy and trustworthiness of self-care advice provided via AI. This paper reports our findings from workshops, diaries, and interviews with five researchers and 24 participants to explore their experiences and use of generative AI for self-care. We analyze our findings to present a framework for the use of generative AI to support five types of self-care, – advice seeking, mentorship, resource creation, social simulation, and therapeutic self-expression – mapped across two dimensions – expertise and modality. We discuss how these practices shift the role of technologies for self-care from merely offering information to offering personalized advice and supporting creativity for reflection, and we offer suggestions for using the framework to investigate new self-care designs.
References
[1]
Quinci Adams. 2019. “No Amount of Baths Is Gonna Make You Feel Better”: Seeking Balance, Wholeness, and Well-Being in Everyday Self-Care. Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography 9, 2, 19-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.15273/jue.v9i2.9377
[2]
Victor Nikhil Antony and Chien-Ming Huang. 2023. Id. 8: Co-Creating Visual Stories with Generative Ai. arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.14228.
[3]
Amid Ayobi, Paul Marshall, Anna L Cox and Yunan Chen. 2017. Quantifying the Body and Caring for the Mind: Self-Tracking in Multiple Sclerosis. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 6889-6901. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025869
[4]
Amid Ayobi, Tobias Sonne, Paul Marshall and Anna L. Cox. 2018. Flexible and Mindful Self-Tracking: Design Implications from Paper Bullet Journals. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Montreal QC, Canada, Paper 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173602
[5]
G. Bell, J. Burgess, J. Thomas and S. Sadiq. 2023. Rapid Response Information Report: Generative Ai - Language Models (Llms) and Multimodal Foundation Models (Mfms). Australian Council of Learned Academies, 2023.
[6]
Joel Brandt, Noah Weiss and Scott R. Klemmer. 2007. Txt 4 L8r: Lowering the Burden for Diary Studies under Mobile Conditions. In Proceedings of CHI '07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, San Jose, CA, USA, 2303–2308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1240866.1240998
[7]
Liz Brewster and Andrew M Cox. 2019. The Daily Digital Practice as a Form of Self-Care: Using Photography for Everyday Well-Being. Health 23, 6, 621-638. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1363459318769465
[8]
Tara Capel and Margot Brereton. 2023. What Is Human-Centered About Human-Centered Ai? A Map of the Research Landscape. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Hamburg, Germany, Article 359. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580959
[9]
Minsuk Chang, Stefania Druga, Alexander J. Fiannaca, Pedro Vergani, Chinmay Kulkarni, Carrie J Cai and Michael Terry. 2023. The Prompt Artists. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Creativity and Cognition. Association for Computing Machinery, Virtual Event, USA, 75–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3591196.3593515
[10]
Linda Charmaraman and Catherine Grevet Delcourt. 2021. Prototyping for Social Wellbeing with Early Social Media Users: Belonging, Experimentation, and Self-Care. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445332
[11]
Kathy Charmaz. 2007. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. Sage, Los Angeles, CA.
[12]
Tiffany Chen, Cassandra Lee, Jessica R Mindel, Neska Elhaouij and Rosalind Picard. 2023. Closer Worlds: Using Generative Ai to Facilitate Intimate Conversations. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Hamburg, Germany, Article 68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585651
[13]
Eun Kyoung Choe, Nicole B. Lee, Bongshin Lee, Wanda Pratt and Julie A. Kientz. 2014. Understanding Quantified-Selfers' Practices in Collecting and Exploring Personal Data. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2014). ACM, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1143-1152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557372
[14]
Caroline Claisse, Bakita Kasadha, Simone Stumpf and Abigail C. Durrant. 2022. Investigating Daily Practices of Self-Care to Inform the Design of Supportive Health Technologies for Living and Ageing Well with Hiv. In Proceedings of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New Orleans, LA, USA, Article 524. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501970
[15]
Valdemar Danry, Joanne Leong, Pat Pataranutaporn, Pulkit Tandon, Yimeng Liu, Roy Shilkrot, Parinya Punpongsanon, Tsachy Weissman, Pattie Maes and Misha Sra. 2022. Ai-Generated Characters: Putting Deepfakes to Good Use. In Proceedings of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. 1-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503736
[16]
Audrey Desjardins, Oscar Tomico, Andrés Lucero, Marta E. Cecchinato and Carman Neustaedter. 2021. Introduction to the Special Issue on First-Person Methods in Hci. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 28, 6, Article 37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3492342
[17]
Xuejun Du, Pengcheng An, Justin Leung, April Li, Linda E. Chapman and Jian Zhao. 2024. Deepthink: Designing and Probing Human-Ai Co-Creation in Digital Art Therapy. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 181, 103139. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103139
[18]
Daniel A Epstein, Clara Caldeira, Mayara Costa Figueiredo, Xi Lu, Lucass M Silva, Lucreetia Williams, Jong Ho Lee, Qingyang Li, Simran Ahuja and Yunan Chen. 2020. Mapping and Taking Stock of the Personal Informatics Literature. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 4, 4, 38.
[19]
William W. Gaver, Jacob Beaver and Steve Benford. 2003. Ambiguity as a Resource for Design. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 233–240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/642611.642653
[20]
Gabriel Gimenez-Perez, Neus Robert-Vila, Marta Tomé-Guerreiro, Ignasi Castells and Didac Mauricio. 2020. Are Youtube Videos Useful for Patient Self-Education in Type 2 Diabetes? Health Informatics Journal 26, 1, 45-55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1460458218813632
[21]
Kumi Ishii, Mary Madison Lyons and Sabrina A. Carr. 2019. Revisiting Media Richness Theory for Today and Future. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies 1, 2, 124-131. http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.138
[22]
Christina Kelley, Bongshin Lee and Lauren Wilcox. 2017. Self-Tracking for Mental Wellness: Understanding Expert Perspectives and Student Experiences. In Proceedings of CHI 2017. ACM, Denver, Colorado, USA, 629-641. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025750
[23]
Rohit Ashok Khot, Jung-Ying Yi and Deepti Aggarwal. 2023. Designing Stardust: Reimagining Self-Care through Everyday Latte Art. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 1915–1929. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596049
[24]
Yubo Kou, Xinning Gui, Yunan Chen and Bonnie Nardi. 2019. Turn to the Self in Human-Computer Interaction: Care of the Self in Negotiating the Human-Technology Relationship. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Glasgow, Scotland Uk, Paper 481. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300711
[25]
Harsh Kumar, Yiyi Wang, Jiakai Shi, Ilya Musabirov, Norman A. S. Farb and Joseph Jay Williams. 2023. Exploring the Use of Large Language Models for Improving the Awareness of Mindfulness. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Hamburg, Germany, Article 129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585614
[26]
Tiffany H. Kung, Morgan Cheatham, Arielle Medenilla, Czarina Sillos, Lorie De Leon, Camille Elepaño, Maria Madriaga, Rimel Aggabao, Giezel Diaz-Candido, James Maningo and Victor Tseng. 2023. Performance of Chatgpt on Usmle: Potential for Ai-Assisted Medical Education Using Large Language Models. PLOS Digital Health 2, 2, e0000198. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000198
[27]
Emily G. Lattie, Rachel Kornfield, Kathryn E. Ringland, Renwen Zhang, Nathan Winquist and Madhu Reddy. 2020. Designing Mental Health Technologies That Support the Social Ecosystem of College Students. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Honolulu, HI, USA, 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376362
[28]
Kenneth Lee, Kreshnik Hoti, Jeffery David Hughes and Lynne M Emmerton. 2015. Consumer Use of “Dr Google”: A Survey on Health Information-Seeking Behaviors and Navigational Needs. J Med Internet Res 17, 12, e288. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4345
[29]
Jingjin Li, Nayeon Kwon, Huong Pham, Ryun Shim and Gilly Leshed. 2023. Co-Designing Magic Machines for Everyday Mindfulness with Practitioners. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 1630–1647. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3595976
[30]
Elkin Luis, Elena Bermejo-Martins, Martín Martinez, Ainize Sarrionandia, Cristian Cortes, Edwin Yair Oliveros, María Sol Garces, José Victor Oron and Pablo Fernández-Berrocal. 2021. Relationship between Self-Care Activities, Stress and Well-Being During Covid-19 Lockdown: A Cross-Cultural Mediation Model. BMJ Open 11, 12, e048469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-048469
[31]
Mark Matthews, Geri Gay and Gavin Doherty. 2014. Taking Part: Role-Play in the Design of Therapeutic Systems. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 643–652. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557103
[32]
Midjourney. Midjourney. Retrieved from https://www.midjourney.com/.
[33]
N. Narain and K.N. Phillips. 2017. Self-Care for the Real World: Practical Self-Care Advice for Everyday Life. Random House,
[34]
Michelle Newcomb. 2022. Self-Care and Environmentalism: Finding a Socially Just Balance as an Early-Career Social Work Researcher. In Reflections on Valuing Wellbeing in Higher Education, Routledge, 53-64.
[35]
Harsha Nori, Yin Tat Lee, Sheng Zhang, Dean Carignan, Richard Edgar, Nicolo Fusi, Nicholas King, Jonathan Larson, Yuanzhi Li and Weishung Liu. 2023. Can Generalist Foundation Models Outcompete Special-Purpose Tuning? Case Study in Medicine. arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.16452.
[36]
Francisco Nunes. 2019. From Medicalized to Mundane Self-Care Technologies. interactions 26, 3, 67–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3319374
[37]
Francisco Nunes, Nervo Verdezoto, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Morten Kyng, Erik Grönvall and Cristiano Storni. 2015. Self-Care Technologies in Hci: Trends, Tensions, and Opportunities. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 22, 6, Article 33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2803173
[38]
Ji Yeon Oh, Daun Kim, Jae-Yeop Jeong, Jin-Woo Jeong and Elizaveta Lukianova. 2023. Tingle Just for You: A Preliminary Study of Ai-Based Customized Asmr Content Generation. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Hamburg, Germany, Article 283. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585872
[39]
OpenAI. Chatgpt. Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/.
[40]
OpenAI. 2024. Introducing the Gpt Store. Retrieved February 8, 2024, from https://openai.com/blog/introducing-the-gpt-store.
[41]
Pat Pataranutaporn, Valdemar Danry, Joanne Leong, Parinya Punpongsanon, Dan Novy, Pattie Maes and Misha Sra. 2021. Ai-Generated Characters for Supporting Personalized Learning and Well-Being. Nature Machine Intelligence 3, 12, 1013-1022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00417-9
[42]
Sachin R Pendse, Daniel Nkemelu, Nicola J Bidwell, Sushrut Jadhav, Soumitra Pathare, Munmun De Choudhury and Neha Kumar. 2022. From Treatment to Healing:Envisioning a Decolonial Digital Mental Health. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New Orleans, LA, USA, Article 548. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501982
[43]
Bernd Ploderer, Atae Rezaei Aghdam and Kara Burns. 2022. Patient-Generated Health Photos and Videos across Health and Well-Being Contexts: Scoping Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 24, 4, e28867.
[44]
Kirsten Posluns and Terry Lynn Gall. 2020. Dear Mental Health Practitioners, Take Care of Yourselves: A Literature Review on Self-Care. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 42, 1, 1-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10447-019-09382-w
[45]
Barbara Riegel, Sandra B. Dunbar, Donna Fitzsimons, Kenneth E. Freedland, Christopher S. Lee, Sandy Middleton, Anna Stromberg, Ercole Vellone, David E. Webber and Tiny Jaarsma. 2021. Self-Care Research: Where Are We Now? Where Are We Going? International Journal of Nursing Studies 116, 103402. http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103402
[46]
Malik Sallam. 2023. Chatgpt Utility in Healthcare Education, Research, and Practice: Systematic Review on the Promising Perspectives and Valid Concerns. Healthcare 11, 6, 887.
[47]
Pedro Sanches, Axel Janson, Pavel Karpashevich, Camille Nadal, Chengcheng Qu, Claudia Daudén Roquet, Muhammad Umair, Charles Windlin, Gavin Doherty and Kristina Höök. 2019. Hci and Affective Health: Taking Stock of a Decade of Studies and Charting Future Research Directions. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300475
[48]
Jingyu Shi, Rahul Jain, Hyungjun Doh, Ryo Suzuki and Karthik Ramani. 2023. An Hci-Centric Survey and Taxonomy of Human-Generative-Ai Interactions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.07127.
[49]
Velvet Spors, Hanne Gesine Wagner, Martin Flintham, Pat Brundell and David Murphy. 2021. Selling Glossy, Easy Futures: A Feminist Exploration of Commercial Mental-Health-Focused Self-Care Apps’ Descriptions in the Google Play Store. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445500
[50]
Alyson K Spurgas and Zo C Meleo-Erwin. 2023. Decolonize Self-Care. OR Books,
[51]
Katlin Marisol Sweeney-Romero. 2022. Wellness Tiktok: Morning Routines, Eating Well, and Getting Ready to Be “That Girl”. In Tiktok Cultures in the United States, Routledge, 108-116. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003280705-13
[52]
Alexandra To, Angela D. R. Smith, Dilruba Showkat, Adinawa Adjagbodjou and Christina Harrington. 2023. Flourishing in the Everyday: Moving Beyond Damage-Centered Design in Hci for Bipoc Communities. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Pittsburgh PA, USA, 917–933. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596057
[53]
S. Turkle. 2011. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, New York.
[54]
Sherry Turkle. 2018. There Will Never Be an Age of Artificial Intimacy. New York Times (Online).
[55]
Theresa Van Lith. 2016. Art Therapy in Mental Health: A Systematic Review of Approaches and Practices. The Arts in Psychotherapy 47, 9-22. http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2015.09.003
[56]
Kimberlee Weatherall, Zofia Bednarz, Jose-Miguel Bello y Villarino, Jean Burgess, Loup Cellard, Tegan Cohen, Henry Fraser, Jake Goldenfein, Timothy Graham, Fiona Haines, Paul Henman, Nataliya Ilyushina, Jenny Kennedy, Jackie Leach Scully, Dennis Leeftink, Suvradip Maitra, Rita Matulionyte, Anthony McCosker, Robert Mullins, Kelsie Nabben, Christine Parker, Thao Phan, Flora Salim, Aaron Snoswell, Julian Thomas, Melanie Trezise, Libby Young and Jacky Zeng. 2023. Adm+S Submission to the Safe and Responsible Ai in Australia Discussion Paper. http://dx.doi.org/10.25916/catx-q405
[57]
Samaneh Zamanifard and Andrew Robb. 2023. Social Virtual Reality Is My Therapist: Overcoming Social Anxiety Disorder through Using Social Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Hamburg, Germany, Article 252. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585888
[58]
Yixuan Zhang, Nurul Suhaimi, Nutchanon Yongsatianchot, Joseph D Gaggiano, Miso Kim, Shivani A Patel, Yifan Sun, Stacy Marsella, Jacqueline Griffin and Andrea G Parker. 2022. Shifting Trust: Examining How Trust and Distrust Emerge, Transform, and Collapse in Covid-19 Information Seeking. In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New Orleans, LA, USA, Article 78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501889
[59]
Christopher Ziguras. 2004. Self-Care: Embodiment, Personal Autonomy and the Shaping of Health Consciousness. Routledge,
Index Terms
- Studying Self-Care with Generative AI Tools: Lessons for Design
Recommendations
Exploring the Design of Generative AI in Supporting Music-based Reminiscence for Older Adults
CHI '24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMusic-based reminiscence has the potential to positively impact the psychological well-being of older adults. However, the aging process and physiological changes, such as memory decline and limited verbal communication, may impede the ability of older ...
Self-Care Technologies in HCI: Trends, Tensions, and Opportunities
Many studies show that self-care technologies can support patients with chronic conditions and their carers in understanding the ill body and increasing control of their condition. However, many of these studies have largely privileged a medical ...
Understanding the Mundane Nature of Self-care: Ethnographic Accounts of People Living with Parkinson's
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsSelf-care technologies have been influenced by medical values and models. One of the values that was acritically incorporated was that self-care was medicalised, and, as a result, technologies were designed to afford use with clinicians and fit ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
July 2024
3616 pages
ISBN:9798400705830
DOI:10.1145/3643834
Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 01 July 2024
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
- Research
- Refereed limited
Conference
DIS '24
Sponsor:
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%
Upcoming Conference
DIS '25
- Sponsor:
- sigchi
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 1,188Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)1,188
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)198
Reflects downloads up to 02 Mar 2025
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML FormatLogin options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in