Bringing Emotions into Practice: The Role of AI in Supporting Emotional Work in Informal Caregiving.

The demanding nature of informal caregiving has negative consequences on caregivers' emotional and physical health. HCI community has increasingly examined ways to support caregivers, but the solutions mostly focus on the negative emotions of caregivers. Informal caregivers go through a range of emotional experiences, both positive and negative. In this dissertation work, I aim to understand the emotional work of informal caregivers and how AI systems can be better designed to support this work. I start with conducting user studies and interviews to understand the valence and intensity of emotions in caregiving work and how this affects the caregiving burden. Then, I plan to use the Emotion Practice Theory to understand the complex emotional work from studies 1 and 2 through parts that AI systems can help caregivers with. This dissertation aims to provide a framework for designing AI systems to support the emotional work of informal caregivers.