A Conceptual Framework for the Evaluation and Development of the Agent Persona in the Adele Web Based Medical Continuing Educational Program

Abstract

An agent assisted, web-based continuing education tool for medical students called ADELE has been under development for some time. Its purpose is to provide practice for second year medical students in diagnosing patients in a virtual reality environment. During Adele’s initial testing; it was found that the look and feel of the agent was not consistent with that of an attending physician. Research was begun on what characteristics of attending physicians might be key to portraying that role. Part of that process was the need to identify which research methods would be most appropriate to use in an evaluation process. Sources were not found in the literature that specifically addressed research methodologies for use in the development of agent characteristics based on real life roles. This paper will discuss three methodologies, their uses, limitations, and their possible final role in developing an agent. It is hoped that this paper will provide a conceptual framework for use in researching and developing an effective agent. Formative research will be used as the first step as a way of gathering data on the most obvious and general characteristics such as dress, gesture and verbal interaction. Phenomenological Research Methodology will be used as a second level of inquiry. Phenomenological Research Methodology is inherently very subtle due to its existentialist roots. At that point, enough characteristics and a complete enough picture of an attending physician could be presented to software developers to generate a new agent depiction. Finally, a usability study would be conducted to evaluate the new agent or agents in comparison with the agents in the context of the ADELE program.