Applying LLM-Powered Virtual Humans to Child Interviews in Child-Centered Design
Abstract
In child-centered design, directly engaging children is crucial for deeply understanding their experiences. However, current research often prioritizes adult perspectives, as interviewing children involves unique challenges such as environmental sensitivities and the need for trust-building. AI-powered virtual humans (VHs) offer a promising approach to facilitate engaging and multimodal interactions with children. This study establishes key design guidelines for LLM-powered virtual humans tailored to child interviews, standardizing multimodal elements including color schemes, voice characteristics, facial features, expressions, head movements, and gestures. Using ChatGPT-based prompt engineering, we developed three distinct Human-AI workflows (LLM-Auto, LLM-Interview, and LLM-Analyze) and conducted a user study involving 15 children aged 6 to 12. The results indicated that the LLM-Analyze workflow outperformed the others by eliciting longer responses, achieving higher user experience ratings, and promoting more effective child engagement.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.20016,
title = {Applying LLM-Powered Virtual Humans to Child Interviews in Child-Centered Design},
author = {Linshi Li and Hanlin Cai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.20016},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This paper has been accepted as a Work-in-Progress (WiP) paper in the 24th annual ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference