Interactive scenarios with avatars have been available in our software packages for quite some time. For example, visual drinking prompts could be triggered by toasting guests. Or one could give a lecture in front of a virtual audience or sit down with passengers on a bus or with passengers in an airplane.

All this can lead to social pressure situations under therapeutic supervision, which facilitate the work with intervention techniques.

Until recently, letting avatars speak would have only been possible with prefabricated texts, which would have brought little therapeutic benefit due to the limitations and low flexibility. Habituation would take place too quickly and the stimulus would diminish with each further exposure.

However, with our latest update, we can take a considerable step forward in this area:

The function is called “Text to speech” and enables therapists to select avatars and have individual texts spoken. These texts can be spontaneously entered manually or a “repertoire” of sentences and questions can be created so that these texts can be spoken with just one click. Unlimited conversations between patients and avatars are now possible in a wide variety of situations.

Here are some examples:

• Persistent requests to drink by guests
• Praise and criticism from a lecture audience
• Critical questions in an exam or job application situation
• Social invitations to talk at an event or in a bar
• Development of a conversation on a bus or in an airplane

When selecting your texts, you can respond to the individual fears and challenges of the patients, thereby pinpointing their sore points precisely.

This new feature gives our scenarios with avatars a whole new quality and increases the usability enormously.

In this video you can see some excerpts of it: