JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Many members of African American/Black communities, faced with the high prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) within their demographic, find themselves taking on the role of informal caregivers. Despite being the primary individuals responsible for the care of ADRD patients, these caregivers often lack sufficient knowledge about ADRD-related health literacy and feel ill-prepared for their caregiving responsibilities. Generative AI has become the new promising technological innovation in healthcare domain, particularly in improving health literacy, however some developments of it might lead to increase the biases and the potential harm towards African American/Black communities. Therefore, the development of generative AI tools to support African American/Black community should be done rigorously.

Objective:

The goal of this study is to test Lola, a multimodal mobile app, which by relying on generative AI, facilitates access to ADRD related health information.

Methods:

Through a cognitive walk-through with users, we tested the use of Lola with 15 African American /Black informal ADRD caregivers, by having them performed three tasks on the app and record their opinions and impressions.

Results:

Our findings highlight the user's need for a system which enables interaction with different modalities, as well as a system which can provide personalized and culturally and contextually relevant information, and the role of community and physical spaces for increasing the use of Lola.

Conclusions:

Our study shows when designing for African American/Black older adults, a multi-modal interaction with the generative AI system can allow individuals to choose their own interaction way and style, based upon their own interaction preferences and their external constrains. This flexibility of interaction modes can guarantee an inclusive and engaging generative AI experience.