Chapter 2 44 Lisanne gives in to cravings, driven by disgust, while Anita binges when she is under a lot of stress.The next step in this research is to develop a use-case scenario for all the Personas next to Lisanne, each of them enriched with their own specific emotional characteristics. Prototype of a ‘Denk je zèlf!’ personalised virtual Coach The first prototype of the architecture of the virtual coach and a clickable prototype of the user interface were developed during the pre-design phase. The Personas Lisanne and Anita served as a starting point for a concept design (Fig. 5) of the user interface and content of ‘Denk je zèlf!’ virtual coach modules: intake, mindfulness, emotion regulation and stress tolerance. The Java-based virtual assistant (developed on the Play framework) makes use of the Alpino open-source natural language parser. This Dutch linguistic language analyser [56] is self-learning and produces ‘tree diagram’ data in XML format. The output is stored in a graph database (NEO4J). The virtual coach was developed to meet the needs of the user for immediate support. Every time a user is experiencing negative emotions, he or she can connect to the virtual coach and ask questions and start a dialogue. The virtual coach is the very heart of the e-DBT ‘Denk je zèlf!’ training. It supplies users with so-called dialectical dialogues – providing answers to their need for change and to their need for acceptance. According to Lynch et al. [20], dialectical theory is defined as: “The thesis (behaviour change) brought forth the antithesis (the need for acceptance), and both acceptance and change-based strategies were integrated into the treatment package (synthesis). Dialectical theory provides the theoretical undercurrent needed to balance and synthesize these strategies. Core acceptance-based strategies derive from client-centered approaches and Zen practice and these involve mindfulness skills, validation, and radical acceptance.” [20, pp. 463]. The goal of the training is to teach people how to develop their own wise mind and to learn to make decisions that have positive consequences for the quality of life. By providing dialectical dialogues, the virtual coach can help the user to practise this process of decision-making by identifying the possible consequences of making decisions. The output of the virtual coach is personalised by data derived from the behavioural chain analysis and the emotion diary. The virtual coach is a self-learning system. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA), often termed experience sampling measures (ESM), is applied within the virtual mHealth coaching application to assess behavioural aspects [5758], for instance by assessing subjective momentary states several times a day via a userexperience diary integrated into a virtual mHealth coach application.
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