Establishing and maintaining long-term human-computer relationships
Moves the unit of design from a single helpful exchange to a relationship that develops through repeated interactions.
What it contributes
Investigates relational agents through a month-long study with 101 users of an exercise-support agent. Relational behaviour affected measures including liking, trust and willingness to continue interacting.
Read with care
An embodied, goal-focused agent studied for a month is different from an open-ended LLM companion. Relational measures do not by themselves establish lasting health or wellbeing benefits.
Why it belongs here
A useful starting point for thinking about continuity, rapport and evaluation across time.
Published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction in 2005.
Source reading depthAuthor-hosted paper's introduction and study overview inspected. This is a source note, not a full critical review.
1,327 citations · OpenAlex ↗
Snapshot: 1 October 2026. Citation counts indicate attention, not reliability; counts differ across databases.