Sleepless Nights, Sugary Days: Creating Synthetic Users with Health Conditions for Realistic Coaching Agent Interactions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yun, Taedong, Yang, Eric, Safdari, Mustafa, Lee, Jong Ha, Kumar, Vaishnavi Vinod, Mahdavi, S. Sara, Amar, Jonathan, Peyton, Derek, Aharony, Reut, Michaelides, Andreas, Schneider, Logan, Galatzer-Levy, Isaac, Jia, Yugang, Canny, John, Gretton, Arthur, Matarić, Maja
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yun, Taedong
Yang, Eric
Safdari, Mustafa
Lee, Jong Ha
Kumar, Vaishnavi Vinod
Mahdavi, S. Sara
Amar, Jonathan
Peyton, Derek
Aharony, Reut
Michaelides, Andreas
Schneider, Logan
Galatzer-Levy, Isaac
Jia, Yugang
Canny, John
Gretton, Arthur
Matarić, Maja
author_facet Yun, Taedong
Yang, Eric
Safdari, Mustafa
Lee, Jong Ha
Kumar, Vaishnavi Vinod
Mahdavi, S. Sara
Amar, Jonathan
Peyton, Derek
Aharony, Reut
Michaelides, Andreas
Schneider, Logan
Galatzer-Levy, Isaac
Jia, Yugang
Canny, John
Gretton, Arthur
Matarić, Maja
contents We present an end-to-end framework for generating synthetic users for evaluating interactive agents designed to encourage positive behavior changes, such as in health and lifestyle coaching. The synthetic users are grounded in health and lifestyle conditions, specifically sleep and diabetes management in this study, to ensure realistic interactions with the health coaching agent. Synthetic users are created in two stages: first, structured data are generated grounded in real-world health and lifestyle factors in addition to basic demographics and behavioral attributes; second, full profiles of the synthetic users are developed conditioned on the structured data. Interactions between synthetic users and the coaching agent are simulated using generative agent-based models such as Concordia, or directly by prompting a language model. Using two independently-developed agents for sleep and diabetes coaching as case studies, the validity of this framework is demonstrated by analyzing the coaching agent's understanding of the synthetic users' needs and challenges. Finally, through multiple blinded evaluations of user-coach interactions by human experts, we demonstrate that our synthetic users with health and behavioral attributes more accurately portray real human users with the same attributes, compared to generic synthetic users not grounded in such attributes. The proposed framework lays the foundation for efficient development of conversational agents through extensive, realistic, and grounded simulated interactions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13135
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sleepless Nights, Sugary Days: Creating Synthetic Users with Health Conditions for Realistic Coaching Agent Interactions
Yun, Taedong
Yang, Eric
Safdari, Mustafa
Lee, Jong Ha
Kumar, Vaishnavi Vinod
Mahdavi, S. Sara
Amar, Jonathan
Peyton, Derek
Aharony, Reut
Michaelides, Andreas
Schneider, Logan
Galatzer-Levy, Isaac
Jia, Yugang
Canny, John
Gretton, Arthur
Matarić, Maja
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
I.2.7
We present an end-to-end framework for generating synthetic users for evaluating interactive agents designed to encourage positive behavior changes, such as in health and lifestyle coaching. The synthetic users are grounded in health and lifestyle conditions, specifically sleep and diabetes management in this study, to ensure realistic interactions with the health coaching agent. Synthetic users are created in two stages: first, structured data are generated grounded in real-world health and lifestyle factors in addition to basic demographics and behavioral attributes; second, full profiles of the synthetic users are developed conditioned on the structured data. Interactions between synthetic users and the coaching agent are simulated using generative agent-based models such as Concordia, or directly by prompting a language model. Using two independently-developed agents for sleep and diabetes coaching as case studies, the validity of this framework is demonstrated by analyzing the coaching agent's understanding of the synthetic users' needs and challenges. Finally, through multiple blinded evaluations of user-coach interactions by human experts, we demonstrate that our synthetic users with health and behavioral attributes more accurately portray real human users with the same attributes, compared to generic synthetic users not grounded in such attributes. The proposed framework lays the foundation for efficient development of conversational agents through extensive, realistic, and grounded simulated interactions.
title Sleepless Nights, Sugary Days: Creating Synthetic Users with Health Conditions for Realistic Coaching Agent Interactions
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
I.2.7
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13135