Co-Design and User Evaluation of a Robotic Mental Well-Being Coach to Support University Students’ Public Speaking Anxiety

Public speaking anxiety is one of the most common subtypes of social anxiety and is a prevalent concern among university students. Many students experience excessive anxiety when giving presentations in front of other people, which can negatively impact their academic performance and overall mental well-being. With limited access to human coaches and interventions, there is a need for innovative technological solutions, including social robots, to extend and enhance mental health support and accessibility. In this article, we first outline a co-design study with five mental health professionals and a participatory design study with six university students, aiming to design a robotic mental well-being coach to help university students manage public speaking anxiety. Afterwards, we detail a user study with 50 university students to evaluate the usability and acceptability of the developed robotic mental well-being coach system. The findings showed that the robotic coach system, which includes the robot and a tablet, received a usability score of 84.05 and had high acceptability among participants who perceived the robot as knowledgeable and competent. Moreover, participants’ self-reported moods significantly improved following the study. Overall, the qualitative and quantitative analyses in this study yield promising results regarding the potential use of robotic coaches to help university students manage their public speaking anxiety.