To influence user behaviors, Internet-based virtual humans (VH) have been used to deliver health interventions. When developing Internet-based VH health interventions, the developers have to make several design decisions on VH’s appearance, role, language, or medium. The design decisions can affect the outcomes of the Internet-based VH health intervention. To help make design decisions, the current paper presents design guidelines drawn from two studies. The two studies used Internet-based VH health intervention to promote colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. The two studies examined the influence of visual design and the influence of the information medium on user intentions to pursue more health information. In the first study, the qualitative analysis of the focus group (n = 73 users in 13 focus groups) transcripts shows that the VH’s visual realism, the VH’s healthcare role, and the presence of a local healthcare provider’s logo influenced the user perceptions of the intervention. The findings from the focus groups were used to iterate the intervention and derive design guidelines. In the second study (n = 1400), the analysis of online surveys from users after the VH-based intervention showed that to positively influence the user intentions to pursue the health topic further, the results recommend the use of an animated VH to deliver health information compared to other mediums of information delivery, such as text. The analysis also shows that very few user comments were related to the VH’s appearance after visual design iterations in the second study. The design guidelines from the two studies can be used by developers when using VH-based interventions to positively influence users’ intention to change behaviors.

为了影响用户的行为，基于Internet的虚拟人（VH）已用于提供健康干预措施。在开发基于Internet的VH健康干预措施时，开发人员必须对VH的外观，角色，语言或媒介做出几个设计决策。设计决策可能会影响基于Internet的VH健康干预的结果。为了帮助做出设计决策，本白皮书提出了两项​​研究得出的设计指南。两项研究使用基于Internet的VH健康干预来促进大肠癌（CRC）筛查。两项研究考察了视觉设计的影响以及信息媒体对用户追求更多健康信息的意图的影响。在第一项研究中 焦点小组（13个焦点小组中的73位用户）笔录的定性分析显示，VH的视觉真实感，VH的医疗保健角色以及当地医疗保健提供者徽标的存在影响了用户对干预的看法。焦点小组的调查结果被用于迭代干预并得出设计指南。在第二项研究（n = 1400）中，对基于VH的干预后用户在线调查的分析表明，为积极影响用户进一步追求健康主题的意图，结果建议使用动画VH来提供健康信息与其他信息传递媒体（例如文本）相比。分析还显示，在第二项研究中，视觉设计迭代后，很少有用户评论与VH的外观相关。