Customizing Emotional Support: How Do Individuals Construct and Interact With LLM-Powered Chatbots

Personalized support is essential to fulfill individuals' emotional needs and sustain their mental well-being. Large language models (LLMs), with great customization flexibility, hold promises to enable individuals to create their own emotional support agents. In this work, we developed ChatLab, where users could construct LLM-powered chatbots with additional interaction features including voices and avatars. Using a Research through Design approach, we conducted a week-long field study followed by interviews and design activities (N = 22), which uncovered how participants created diverse chatbot personas for emotional reliance, confronting stressors, connecting to intellectual discourse, reflecting mirrored selves, etc. We found that participants actively enriched the personas they constructed, shaping the dynamics between themselves and the chatbot to foster open and honest conversations. They also suggested other customizable features, such as integrating online activities and adjustable memory settings. Based on these findings, we discuss opportunities for enhancing personalized emotional support through emerging AI technologies.