Virtual humans (VHs) have the potential to support mental wellness among college computer science (CS) students. However, designing effective VHs for counseling purposes requires a clear understanding of students’ demographics, backgrounds, and expectations. To this end, we conducted two user studies with 216 CS students from a major university in North America. In the first study, we explored how students co-designed VHs to support mental wellness conversations and found that the VHs’ demographics, appearance, and voice closely resembled the characteristics of their designers. In the second study, we investigated how the interplay between the VH’s appearance and voice impacted the agent’s effectiveness in promoting CS students’ intentions toward gratitude journaling. Our findings suggest that the active participation of CS students in VH design leads to the creation of agents that closely resemble their designers. Moreover, we found that the interplay between the VH’s appearance and voice impacts the agent’s effectiveness in promoting CS students’ intentions toward mental wellness techniques.

虚拟人 (VH) 有潜力支持大学计算机科学 (CS) 学生的心理健康。然而，为了咨询目的设计有效的 VH 需要清楚地了解学生的人口统计、背景和期望。为此，我们对来自北美一所重点大学的 216 名计算机科学学生进行了两项用户研究。在第一项研究中，我们探讨了学生如何共同设计 VH 以支持心理健康对话，并发现 VH 的人口统计数据、外观和声音与设计者的特征非常相似。在第二项研究中，我们调查了 VH 的外表和声音之间的相互作用如何影响代理人促进 CS 学生写感恩日记的意图的有效性。我们的研究结果表明，计算机科学学生积极参与 VH 设计会导致创建与其设计师非常相似的代理。此外，我们发现 VH 的外观和声音之间的相互作用会影响代理在促进 CS 学生对心理健康技术的意图方面的有效性。