Hello, my name is Hyo Jin,
and I would like to present our research
on designing a conversational interface
for sexual harassment prevention
training.
In a nutshell, we investigated how an
interface that offers
virtual conversation with a target of
sexual harassment
can impact users' learning experiences
and their feelings of empathy.
Let me share how we conducted the study.
The #MeToo movement that erupted in 2017
has revealed that sexual harassment in
and out of the workplace is more
prevalent than we realized.
According to a survey in 2018, 81 percent
of women and 43 percent of men in the
United States
have experienced sexual harassment or
assault at least once in their lifetime.
Sexual harassment is still an ongoing
issue and many companies and
organizations are seeking ways to build
a proper anti-harassment culture
such as offering mandatory sexual
harassment prevention training.
But are these training programs
effective?
Recurring sexual harassment incidents
are raising doubts about the
effectiveness of existing sexual
harassment prevention programs.
Surprisingly little research has been
performed on the effectiveness of the
training methods.
Some research has found that these
training can teach basic information
like the definitions of sexual
harassment.
However, current training methods
seem to have little impact on changing
one's behavior
and even backfire such as reinforcing
gender stereotypes,
thus failing to prevent sexual
harassment from happening.
Our work envisions a new class of
interactive training delivered by
a conversational interface to increase
effectiveness of the training.
We designed a proof-of-concept
conversational interface
that provides a virtual chatting
experience with Jane,
who has been sexually harassed at work.
The interface was designed based on
several design principles of effective
training derived from prior research.
One of the principles we considered was
to utilize synchronous
media like this chat rather than
asynchronous activities.
Jane starts narrating a vignette in
first person,
simulating how a real person might
discuss an incident of sexual harassment
to another.
This incorporates the second design
principle from a prior study suggesting
that a vignette written in first-person
narrative
can increase empathy towards targets of
sexual harassment.
A user plays a role of a listener and
participates in a real-time conversation
to give advice
and show reactions. The user can interact
with Jane through pre-scripted short
messages as shown in the demo. Jane
sometimes asks
questions or seeks advice during the
conversation in which a user needs to
respond in an open-ended format.
The design decisions were made based on
a design principle
in which interactive and experiential
methods
are more effective than passive methods
for reducing incidents of sexual
harassment.
The research goal was to evaluate the
use and design
of the conversational interface for the
purpose of sexual harassment prevention
training
as well as to compare with the
traditional training.
As such, we planned to answer the following
research questions.
First, what limitations do learners
perceive
in traditional sexual harassment
prevention training?
Second, what strengths and weaknesses do
learners perceive
in the use of the conversational
interface for sexual harassment
prevention training?
Lastly, does the experience through the
conversational interface
increase empathy and improve attitudes
towards sexual harassment?
We conducted a user study to answer the
research questions.
We recruited 32 participants from a
university community in the United
States.
Thus, 62 percent of the participants
self-reported as students.
About 56 percent of the participants were female.
We found that 84 percent of the participants
completed sexual harassment prevention
training in the past.
Most of the participants previously had
in-class discussions that professionals
or student leaders discuss
related topics, or online courses that
present texts and videos with
interactive components.
When the participants came to the lab,
they went through
an informed consent process and logged
in to our website with their assigned ID.
Before the experiment, participants
completed a survey
that asked demographics and pre-existing
attitudes towards
sexual harassment.
Then, the participants were randomly
assigned to one of the experimental
conditions.
Half of the participants used the
conversational interface,
whereas the other half of the
participants used the control interface.
The control interface presented the same
vignette written in first-person
narrative
as a text-based format on the website.
After using each interface, the
participants completed a post-task
survey
that measured their empathy towards the
target.
The Sexual Harassment Myth Acceptance
scale was used to measure attitudes
towards sexual harassment in general.
Finally, a semi-structured interview was
conducted that lasted about 30 minutes.
We conducted thematic analysis to
generate the themes appeared during the
interview
and statistical analysis to compare the
empathy levels and attitudes between the
conditions.
The study was reviewed by IRB and we
carefully implemented several safety
measures
for the potential risks that our study
may bring such as
providing resources and securing
anonymity during the chat.
I will move on to the findings. Due to time
constraints, I am going to emphasize
a few important findings. Please refer to
our paper
if you are interested in reading all the
results.
First, we interviewed participants about
their past training experiences and
generated the themes.
One of the shortcomings commonly
mentioned by the participants was that
the training content felt common sense
to them.
Participants were not motivated as much
as they should
because they felt sexual harassment will
never happen to them or someone they
know.
Specific to in-person training,
participants said that they were
uncomfortable to talk about such a
sensitive issue
in front of others.
We then asked about the strengths of
the conversational interface.
The perceived benefits of the
conversational interface favorably
contrasted with the perceived
limitations of the traditional training.
Participants found the chatting
experience engaging
because reading messages one by one
added suspense to vignette.
Participants mentioned that they were
immersed in the chat
and became motivated to take the role of
a helper to Jane,
even though they were aware that Jane is
not a real person.
Compared to in-person training
experience, people
endorsed the idea of using the
conversational interface
as they felt less vulnerable to others'
reactions.
On the other hand, one of the limitations
of the conversational interface was that
participants felt hurried to make a
response.
One participant said, "if you can't find
the resources right on the spot,
then you feel like you are not very
supportive to that person".
Although we found promising results
about the conversational interface
through interviews,
we did not see significant differences
in the empathy levels or attitudes
towards sexual harassment between the
conversational interface condition
and the control condition.
We analyzed interviews to
investigate why there was no such
difference.
During the interview, we asked an empathy
related question such as how close the
participant
felt with Jane and why.
In both groups, the most common reason
that explained users' empathy
was related to the extent of overlap
between their past
and current situations and that of Jane's.
The more the overlap, the more empathy
they felt.
We also found that personal
relationships such as friendship
is important to increase empathetic
interaction.
Some participants said that the personal
connection with Jane was shallow,
thus perceived less empathy.
Based on these findings, we suggest the
designers to personalize the vignette to
users' experiences
to increase empathy.
Spending some time to build rapport with
the persona before the intervention may
increase empathy
as well. What do the findings tell us?
We found that the storytelling
conversational interface
offers a more engaging, interactive,
and emotionally comfortable training
experience.
These benefits might be best explained
by the transportation theory.
Transportation theory explains the
persuasive effects of narratives on
people
in which users feel connected with the
protagonists,
thereby increasing enjoyment, engagement,
and motivation.
This study demonstrated success in
transporting participants in the
vignette
as they were immersed in the chat and
motivated to help the character.
The findings of this work could
generalize to other mandatory training
programs such as diversity training.
Discussions on sensitive topics such as
counseling sessions can also benefit
from using the conversational interface.
Finally, our suggestions about empathy
arousing designs
could be useful to other interfaces that
value empathy from users
such as medical crowdfunding. That
concludes my presentation.
Thank you all for listening.