Abstract
Autonomous e-coaching systems offer their users suggestions for action, thereby affecting the user's decision-making process. More specifically, the suggestions that these systems make influence the options for action that people actually consider. Surprisingly though, options and the corresponding process of option generation--a decision-making stage preceding intention formation and action selection--have received very little attention in the various disciplines studying decision making. We argue that this neglect is unjustified and that it is important, particularly for designers of autonomous e-coaching systems, to understand how human option generation works. The aims of this paper are threefold. The first aim is to generate awareness with designers of autonomous e-coaching systems that these systems do in fact influence their users' options. The second is to show that understanding the interplay between a person's options and the e-coaching system's suggestions is important for improving the effectiveness of the system. The third is that the very same interplay is also crucial for designing e-coaching systems that respect people's autonomy.
Highlights
Intelligent, autonomous e-coaching systems are becoming more and more mainstream, offering people a wide variety of strategies and techniques intended to help them fulfill their goals for self-improvement (Blanson Henkemans et al 2009; Klein et al 2011; Kaptein et al 2012)
Though, options and the corresponding process of option generation—a decision-making stage preceding intention formation and action selection—have received very little attention in the various disciplines studying decision making. We argue that this neglect is unjustified and that it is important, for designers of autonomous e-coaching systems, to understand how human option generation works
While these innovative systems offer new and exciting opportunities for individualized coaching in a range of different domains, they highlight a gap in our current understanding of the intimate relationship between an e-coaching system on the one hand, and a human user on the other hand, and the effect that this relationship has on the user in terms of his or her self-directedness, or autonomy
Summary
Intelligent, autonomous e-coaching systems are becoming more and more mainstream, offering people a wide variety of strategies and techniques intended to help them fulfill their goals for self-improvement (Blanson Henkemans et al 2009; Klein et al 2011; Kaptein et al 2012). There is a positive drive behind these innovations, but what is striking is that there seems to be very little awareness (except for a AI & Soc (2015) 30:77–88 meta-study by Torning and Oinas-Kukkonen 2009) that such systems are interfering with people’s decisionmaking process by directly or indirectly offering suggestions for action. The first is to generate awareness with system designers that autonomous e-coaching technologies have advanced to a point where the suggestions for action that a system offers seriously affect the options that users consider. Of the practical implications of this work and offer suggestions for further research
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