TherAIssist: Assisting Art Therapy Homework and Client-Practitioner Collaboration through Human-AI Interaction

TL;DR

TherAIssist integrates human-AI co-creative art-making with conversational agents to support art therapy homework and asynchronous therapist-client collaboration. A one-month field study with 24 clients and 5 therapists demonstrates that the system lowers the barrier to art therapy between sessions, enables therapists to tailor homework agents, and provides AI-compiled homework history to inform in-session discussions. The work contributes a dual-interface system and rich empirical insights on design implications for multimodal, customizable, longitudinal AI support in art therapy. It highlights practical benefits and risks, including workload, data privacy, and AI limitations, and discusses directions for safer, scalable deployment. The findings advance HCI understandings of long-term human-AI collaboration in therapeutic contexts.

Abstract

Art therapy homework is essential for fostering clients' reflection on daily experiences between sessions. However, current practices present challenges: clients often lack guidance for completing tasks that combine art-making and verbal expression, while therapists find it difficult to track and tailor homework. How HCI systems might support art therapy homework remains underexplored. To address this, we present TherAIssist, comprising a client-facing application leveraging human-AI co-creative art-making and conversational agents to facilitate homework, and a therapist-facing application enabling customization of homework agents and AI-compiled homework history. A 30-day field study with 24 clients and 5 therapists showed how TherAIssist supported clients' homework and reflection in their everyday settings. Results also revealed how therapists infused their practice principles and personal touch into the agents to offer tailored homework, and how AI-compiled homework history became a meaningful resource for in-session interactions. Implications for designing human-AI systems to facilitate asynchronous client-practitioner collaboration are discussed.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Art therapy homework outcomes from the therapists' previous practice: (a): T4; (b)-(c): T5; (d)-(g): T3
• Figure 2: TherAIssist consists of the client-facing application and the therapist-facing application (is presented in translated English Version): (1) the client-facing application includes the Art-making Phrase interface and the Discussion Phrase interface; (2) the therapist-facing application includes Homework Agents' Customization interface and AI-compiled Homework Interface
• Figure 3: Overview of the TherAIssist system architecture
• Figure 4: Overview of The Homework Engagement of Clients with TherAIssist: (a) Homework Activity Date Distribution; (b) Accumulated Homework Activity Hourly Distribution of the Day; (c) Usage of AI Brushes in Artworks;
• Figure 5: Photos provided by clients showing their typical settings while using TherAIssist: (1) C2 in her bedroom; (2) C7 in a library; (3) C16 at home; (4) C10 in his dormitory; (5) C22 in her office; (6) C9 at home; (7) C21 at home. (Note: Clients were invited to pose for these photos.)