Designing Emotionally Adaptive Chatbots for Diverse Users: A User-Centered Human-AI Interface Framework
subject: Affective Computing; Emotion Recognition; Human-AI Interaction; Machine Learning; User-Centered Design
description: Recent advancements in conversational AI have improved task efficiency but often neglect the emotional and cognitive diversity of users. This research introduces a novel, user-centered framework for emotionally adaptive chatbots that integrates ML-based emotion recognition with personalized responses that are ethically filtered meaning they are designed to respect user privacy, fairness, and transparency principles. The Berlin Emotional Speech Database (EmoDB) was used to train and evaluate three machine learning models using MFCC features. Among them, the XGBoost model achieved the highest classification accuracy of 77.6%, outperforming Random Forest (75.0%) and SVM (68.2%). To evaluate user experience, a dataset of 385 participants was generated using a 15-item Likert-scale questionnaire adapted from the UTAUT model and extended with trust and emotional alignment measures. Statistical tests, including a t-test (p = 0.711) between neurodiverse and non-neurodiverse users and an ANOVA (p = 0.337) across domains, confirmed the consistency and inclusivity of perceived satisfaction. Visual analytics, including correlation heatmaps and radar charts, revealed that users with predicted emotions such as happiness and neutral reported the highest satisfaction scores (mean = 4.49, SD = 0.29 and mean = 4.26, SD = 0.31, respectively). A seven-layered modular architecture was proposed, supporting real-time emotional adaptivity, personalization, and ethical compliance. The framework is integration-ready with NLP engines like GPT and Dialogflow, offering a scalable solution for affective AI deployment across healthcare, education, and public service domains. Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
creator: Deshmukh, Priyanka; Karmore, Bhavana; Ingole, Mahendra; Upreti, Kamal
source: Turkish Journal of Engineering;Volume;10;Issue;1;pp.1-12
publisher: Murat Yakar
date: 01-01-2026
rights: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
relation: ISSN: 25871366;
format: online
language: English
type: Article
coverage: Deshmukh P., G.H.Raisoni University, Department of Computer Science Science & Technology, Maharashtra, Amravati, India; Karmore B., G H Raisoni University, Department of Computer Application, Maharashtra, Amravati, India; Ingole M., Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj University, Department Commerce and Management, Maharashtra, Panvel, India; Upreti K., Department of Computer Applications, CHRIST University, Delhi NCR, Ghaziabad, India