Anticipating a future with digital assistants : Futuristic Autobiographies to explore stress management

Abstract: Digital assistants such as Google Assistant and Alexa are becoming more and more common in people's homes through smart speakers. Technologies that assist with stress management have increased as well, leading to an abundance of stress management applications for different devices. However, there is a limited amount of research regarding how advanced digital assistants could support stress management and be integrated into users' daily activities. Therefore, our study explores how people anticipate that they would relate to an advanced digital assistant in the future and how they would integrate it into their everyday activities for stress management. Our study shows that important aspects of digital assistants relate to their objectivity, personalization, and adaptability in terms of type of interaction in different contexts. The study also finds that privacy and control, such as a mute function or an on & off function, are desired in order to adjust the digital assistant and integrate it into everyday activities. Finally, stress management with digital assistants is highly personal and how users would relate to and integrate digital assistants into their everyday activities for stress management is unique to each user.