Papers for

digital wellbeing coaches

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Voice assistant guides users to understand personal sleep changes better

Guided Reflection for Personal Sleep Insight in Everyday Sleep Tracking

Abstract: Digital sleep technologies make tracking accessible, yet users often struggle to interpret what changes in their sleep mean. Behavioral sleep medicine addresses this through guided discovery, helping patients develop personal interpretations rather than simply receiving explanations. To bring this to everyday tracking, we present DREAM, an LLM-powered voice assistant that monitors conversational sleep diaries, selectively invites users to interpret meaningful changes, and uses their interpretation to tailor subsequent education. We co-designed DREAM with sleep specialists iteratively and evaluated it in a six-week field study (N=14) against a generic-education control. DREAM participants reported greater personal sleep insight, motivation, and willingness to use the system, and described a clearer rationale for trying strategies. Our findings suggest that guided reflection made participants more active interpreters of their own sleep. Furthermore, we argue that expert involvement is not a single transfer of knowledge but an ongoing process of making tacit judgment explicit and testable.

Wed 7 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Many people use digital tools to track their sleep, but they often find it hard to understand what changes in their sleep data really mean. The authors created DREAM, a voice assistant powered by a large language model, that talks with users about their sleep diaries and encourages them to think about what the changes in their sleep might mean. Over six weeks, people using DREAM felt they understood their sleep better and were more motivated to try new strategies. This approach helps people become active learners about their own sleep rather than just passively receiving general advice.
Open → 2610.10822v1