Notso AI is an official business partner of Workplace Vitality Hub. Together, we are exploring how emotionally intelligent AI mascots can support genuine mental well-being at work.
The question at the heart of the collaboration is simple but important: what happens when AI stops feeling like a transaction and starts feeling like a familiar, approachable character?
The research question
Trust starts with the experience, not only the answer.
Useful knowledge matters, but sensitive conversations ask for more than accurate retrieval. Tone, timing, visual expression and the clarity of a character’s role all shape whether someone feels comfortable enough to engage.
That is why our work combines conversational technology with character design, story and emotional cues. The aim is not to imitate a therapist. It is to create an accessible first step that can listen, guide and make the route to the right human support clearer.
What happens when AI stops feeling transactional and starts feeling like a friend?
What we are studying
From adoption and trust to responsible handoff.
The partnership creates a real-world setting for studying willingness to use AI support, the barriers employees and managers experience, and the moments where a digital buddy can be genuinely useful.
- How character and tone influence approachability
- Which boundaries need to be explicit from the first interaction
- When self-guided support should become a human handoff
- How feedback can improve the experience without compromising trust
A shared ambition
Technology should help people move forward.
Workplace Vitality Hub brings researchers, students, employers and technology partners together around healthier ways of working. That makes it a natural place to test the promise—and the limits—of a more human experience layer for AI.
Verder ontdekken
