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Kuīni

Kuini is Chatbot designed to support wāhine Māori kick their smoking habit, on their own terms.

Chatbot AI content training & development

Challenge

Te Hiringa Hauora (now Te Whatu Ora) were looking for innovative ways to engage with and assist younger adults to quit smoking. Younger adults were preferring to 'DIY' and go 'cold turkey' rather engage with 'traditional' quit smoking services offered by phone or in person in a medical setting.

The research told us that 'cold turkey' wasn't a very effective way to quit and that younger adults often made a decision to quit 'on the fly'.
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So our hypothesis was to test and create a digital health tool that would better enable and also support people to quit on 'their own terms' and make it available on the channels they use everyday - social media.
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Solution

We put forward the ideas to create an intelligent chatbot that could be marketed via socials and accessed easily via Facebook Messenger, providing text message support and tools over a 30 day period. We worked with the THH team that included tobacco control and research specialists to evolve this idea.

The first version of the chatbot was created for male 'tradies' and tested for efficacy, with outstanding results, providing our hypothesis.

Building iteratively, we pivoted to designing a chatbot for and with wāhine Māori, who as a demographic group, had the highest prevalence of smoking and lower levels of engagement in more 'traditional' quit services.

We led the product and UX design and development of 'Kuīni' for wāhine Māori, bringing onboard Papakura Marae Health Centre, IDIA and Cocoa Solid to create the content and provide expertise in hauora with avatar artwork by Xoe Hall.

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Results

The chatbot was created as a digital support tool for wāhine aged 18 to 34, to be more successful in their cold turkey or supported attempts to quit smoking. Kuīni was delivered through Facebook messenger and has been designed to send daily messages, distractions and encouragements to help users on their quitting journey over a 30 day period.

Kuīni was tested with over 30 women. The results were outstanding - Over 50% had quit smoking completely, and a further 45% have cut down very significantly. This was a fantastic result when compared to other quit smoking services.

With thanks to: The THH team including Sue, Greg, Russell, Te Miri, Aran; The Papakura Marae Health team including Rawiri Jansen; Cocoa Solid, Xoe Hall and the IDIA team including Miriame and John.

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