| Determining the Determinants of Health Behaviour Change through an Online Social Network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-12 | |
| Noreen Kamal; Sidney Fels | |||
| The ABC framework provides determinants for leveraging the motivational
power of online social networks with the determinants for promoting health
behaviour changes. We designed VivoSpace, a medium fidelity prototype of an
online social network to promote healthy behaviour changes based on the
guidelines for incorporating these determinants. We evaluated the determinants
of appeal, belonging and commitment using both direct and indirect methods with
36 adult subjects. Indirect evaluation methods included a helping game
experiment, adopted from experimental behavioural economics to measure indirect
reciprocity evoked by VivoSpace, which is an important factor in developing
belonging. Similarly, an in-group experiment was adopted to evaluate group
commitment. Our results show that VivoSpace's design based on the ABC framework
result in a strong degree of agreement with the appeal determinants with
evidence for the promotion of belonging and commitment. Thus, we have evidence
for the effectiveness of design elements for evoking behaviour change to
improve health using an online social network. Keywords: Laboratory experiments; health behaviour change; VivoSpace; ABC framework | |||
| Empowering Independent Living for People with Autism: Designing Supportive, Low-Cost, Interactive E-Health Environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 13-30 | |
| Winslow Burleson; Naomi Newman; Ryan Brotman | |||
| An investigation of the Caregiver Autism Residential E-health (CARE) system,
a low-cost, end-user deployable smart home technology, has been evaluated for
its potential as an empowering assistive technology for adults living with
autism. It allows adults living with autism and their caregivers to create
personalized smart home interventions that provide motivational support for
activities of daily living, social relationships, and safer behaviors. This is
achieved through the use of a ubiquitous computing system composed of
off-the-shelf consumer electronic technologies. The Environmental Rating Scale
(ERS), designed to assess residential interventions for people living with
autism, guided the development and evaluation of CARE/ERS heuristics and
interaction scenarios. The contributions of this investigation, advanced
through an iterative design process involving expert reviewers, caregivers, and
end-users in a patient centered approach for the design of actualizing e-health
interventions, can be readily applied to a broad range of residential
circumstances that improve quality of life. Keywords: Autism; Smart Homes; E-Health; Multimedia Services; Assistive Technology | |||
| Persuasive Sensing: A Novel In-Home Monitoring Technology to Assist Elderly Adult Diabetic Patients | | BIBA | Full-Text | 31-42 | |
| Samir Chatterjee; Jongbok Byun; Akshay Pottathil; Miles N. Moore; Kaushik Dutta; Harry (Qi) Xie | |||
| Diabetes mellitus is a common but serious chronic disease that kills thousands of patients worldwide each year. While there are several useful regimens that can be followed to manage the disease, elderly adult patients have particular difficulties in self-managing the disease. In this paper we present a novel approach to self-management -- persuasive sensing -- that uses environmental and body-wearable sensors that continuously detects activities and physiological parameters. Our system sends persuasive text messages and a weekly health newsletter aimed to alter the subject's behavior. We present the findings from an in-home monitoring implementation. The results obtained are quite encouraging. We discuss the challenges and lessons learned from such a field experiment and how we can improve upon the technology. | |||
| Turning the Classic Snake Mobile Game into a Location-Based Exergame that Encourages Walking | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 43-54 | |
| Luca Chittaro; Riccardo Sioni | |||
| Exergames (video games that combine exercise and play) could encourage
physical activity by making it more enjoyable. Mobile devices are an
interesting platform for exergames because they can support outdoors activities
such as walking and running. Different mobile exergames have been proposed in
the literature, and typically evaluated with informal interviews and ad-hoc
questionnaires. The research we present in this paper had two main goals.
First, we wanted to design a fun and easy-to-use mobile exergame to encourage
walking. To this purpose, we propose a location-based version of the classic
Snake mobile game, in which users can control the snake by walking. Second, we
wanted to introduce important measures (such as users' attitude towards
walking) in the evaluation of exergames, by adopting validated questionnaires
employed in the medical literature. The results of the study presented in this
paper shed light on how differences in users' lifestyle can be related to
exergame enjoyment and to attitude change fostered by the exergame. Keywords: Mobile games; Exergames; Location-based games; Attitude change | |||
| Phone Row: A Smartphone Game Designed to Persuade People to Engage in Moderate-Intensity Physical Activity | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 55-66 | |
| Matthijs Jan Zwinderman; Azadeh Shirzad; Xinyu Ma; Prina Bajracharya; Hans Sandberg; Maurits Clemens Kaptein | |||
| Few people reach the recommended levels of moderate-intensity physical
activity (MIPA). This study examines whether persuasive technology, in the form
of a smartphone game, can help people engage more in MIPA. A smartphone boat
racing game was developed that requires users to make rowing movements and
therefore engage in MIPA to play it successfully. With these rowing movements,
users can control the movement of a virtual boat across a virtual track on an
external screen. Users were fond of the concept of the game. However, a
sub-optimal implementation resulted in users not wanting to replay the game and
thus not developing a habit involving performance of MIPA. The implementation
of the concept was inadequate for testing the hypothesis that a smartphone game
can help people engage more in MIPA. Keywords: moderate-intensity physical activity; exercise; smartphone game; persuasive
technology; exergaming | |||
| Developing Persuasive Technology for ASD Challenged Teenagers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 67-78 | |
| Morten Aagaard; Peter Øhrstrøm | |||
| The HANDS project suggests the use of Mobile Persuasion in order to support teenagers with an autism diagnosis and normal or high IQ. The paper offers a description of the HANDS toolset and its potential. The HANDS toolset has been evaluated at four schools for teenagers with autism over a period of 7 months. The paper presents the main conclusions from this evaluation and some perspectives of the use of systems like HANDS are discussed. | |||
| Talk to Act: How Internet Use Empowers Users to Participate in Collective Actions Offline | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 79-89 | |
| Sandy Schumann; Olivier Klein; Karen Douglas | |||
| This study examines how Internet use can empower users to carry out
collective actions for an environmentalism movement organization. More
precisely, we focused on the impact of online interactivity, i.e., the fact
that users can share content online and receive feedback on it from others. The
participatory Internet fulfills thereby two preconditions of a sense of
psychological empowerment: a) receiving information about the goals and
performance of an organization and b) experiencing an effective reward system.
Using an experimental design, our results showed that users' sense of
empowerment was indeed increased by online interactivity. Higher sense of
empowerment led to stronger willingness to participate in a panel discussion
and demonstration for the environmentalist organization. In addition, when
users were identifiable with their name and photo as compared to being
anonymous while making their contributions, the likelihood to get engaged was
higher, mediated by an increased sense of empowerment. The importance of
intra-individual processes when studying the impact of Internet use on behavior
is discussed, as well as the role of identifiability online. Keywords: psychological empowerment; collective actions; social media; anonymity | |||
| The Illusion of Agency: The Influence of the Agency of an Artificial Agent on Its Persuasive Power | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-99 | |
| Cees J. H. Midden; Jaap Ham | |||
| Artificial social agents can influence people. However, artificial social
agents are not real humans, and people may ascribe less agency to them. Would
the persuasive power of a social robot diminish when people ascribe only little
agency to it? To investigate this question, we performed an experiment in which
participants performed tasks on a washing machine and received feedback from a
robot about their energy consumption (e.g., "Your energy consumption is too
high"), or factual, non-social feedback. This robot was introduced to
participants as (a) an avatar (that was controlled a human in all its feedback
actions; high agency), or as (b) an autonomous robot (that controlled its own
feedback actions; moderate agency), or as (c) a robot that produced only random
feedback; low agency). Results indicated that participants consumed less energy
when a robotic social agent gave them feedback than when they received
non-social feedback. This behavioral effect was independent of the level of
robotic agency. In contrast, a perceived agency measure indicated that the
random feedback robot was ascribed the lowest agency rating. These results
suggest that the persuasive power of robot behavior is independent of the
extent to which the persuadee explicitly ascribes agency to the agent. Keywords: Persuasive Technology; Agency; Social Robotics; Persuasive Power | |||
| Tailoring Feedback to Users' Actions in a Persuasive Game for Household Electricity Conservation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 100-111 | |
| Luciano Gamberini; Anna Spagnolli; Nicola Corradi; Giulio Jacucci; Giovanni Tusa; Topi Mikkola; Luca Zamboni; Eve E. Hoggan | |||
| Recent work has begun to focus on the use of games as a platform for energy
awareness and eco-feedback research. While technical advancements (wireless
sensors, fingerprinting) make timely and tailored feedback an objective within
easy reach, we argue that taking into account the users' own personal
consumption behavior and tailoring feedback accordingly is a key requirement
and a harder challenge. We present a first attempt in this direction,
EnergyLife, which is designed to support the users' actions and embeds
contextualized feedback triggered by specific actions of the user, called
'smart advice'. We conclude by showing the results of a four-month trial with
four households that returned promising results on the effectiveness and
acceptance of this feature. Keywords: Sustainability; feedback; adaptive; context aware; design; energy awareness;
persuasive technology; smart advice | |||
| Motivational Technologies: A Theoretical Framework for Designing Preventive Health Applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 112-122 | |
| S. Shyam Sundar; Saraswathi Bellur; Haiyan Jia | |||
| Every day, millions of people seek health information online, but we still
do not know how to create websites or mobile applications that could motivate
them to change their health-related behaviors in a proactive manner. There is a
big difference between learning about one's health status and doing something
about it. In order to bridge this gap, we provide a theoretical framework for
designing Motivational Technologies. We discuss how three affordances of modern
media interfaces -- navigability, interactivity, and customization -- could be
used to enhance individuals' intrinsic motivation for preventive health, based
on self-determination theory. Empirical evidence and design guidelines
discussed here could lead to significant advances in health information systems
aimed at promoting preventive health behaviors. Keywords: Motivational technology; preventive health; navigability; interactivity;
customization; intrinsic motivation; self-determination | |||
| The Voluntariness of Persuasive Technology | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 123-132 | |
| Jilles Smids | |||
| The most important ethical question regarding PTs is the voluntariness of
changes they bring about. Coercive technologies control its users by
application of direct force or credible threat. Manipulative technologies
control their users by influencing them in ways of which the users are not
aware and cannot control. As a result, both violate the voluntariness condition
of the standard definition of PTs. Any voluntariness assessment needs to
consider whether there are external controlling influences and whether the user
acts intentionally. Keywords: voluntary change; persuasive technology; coercion; manipulation; ethics of
persuasive technology; controlling influences; intentional action | |||
| Persuasion and Reflective Learning: Closing the Feedback Loop | | BIBA | Full-Text | 133-144 | |
| Lars Müller; Verónica Rivera-Pelayo; Stephan Heuer | |||
| Reflecting about past experiences can lead to new insights and changes in behavior that are similar to the goals of persuasive technology. This paper compares both research directions by examining the underlying feedback loops. Persuasive technology aims at reinforcing clearly defined behaviors to achieve measurable goals and therefore focuses on the optimal form of feedback to the user. Reflective learning aims at establishing goals and insights. Hence, the design of tools is mainly concerned with providing the right data to trigger a reflection process. In summary, both approaches differ mainly in the amount of guidance and this opens up a design space between reflective learning and persuasive computing. Both approaches may learn from each other and can use common capturing technologies. However, tools for reflective learning require additional concepts and cues to account for the unpredictability of relevance of captured data. | |||
| Normative Social Influence in Persuasive Technology: Intensity versus Effectiveness | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 145-156 | |
| Thijs Waardenburg; Robbert Winkel; Maarten H. Lamers | |||
| It has been established that normative social influence can be used
effectively in persuasive technology. However, it is unknown whether the
application of more social pressure makes it more effective. To test this
hypothesis, a quantitative experiment was conducted on the online social
network Facebook. Although evidence to support the hypothesis was found, it
cannot be concluded from this experiment that more intense persuasion is more
effective, when utilizing normative social influence in persuasive technology. Keywords: Persuasive technology; captology; normative social influence; mass
interpersonal persuasion; social networks | |||
| Exploring Perceived Persuasiveness of a Behavior Change Support System: A Structural Model | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 157-168 | |
| Filip Drozd; Tuomas Lehto; Harri Oinas-Kukkonen | |||
| There is no healthcare system in the world that has the capacity or
resources to provide every person in need of help and support of changing
lifestyle behaviors. Consequently, there is a need to design health information
systems that enable individuals to manage their health and maintain a healthier
lifestyle. However, there is limited knowledge about how individuals perceive
these behavior change support systems and how individuals' perceptions affect
the use of such systems. In the present study, we tested a persuasive systems
design model that had a significant impact on perceived persuasiveness and
system usage. Also, there appears to be some local gender differences in the
strength of the relationships between factors (perceived persuasiveness and
intention, and unobtrusiveness and intention). We discuss future developments
of the model and health as a social and personal responsibility. Keywords: persuasive systems design; behavior change support systems; usage; gender
and technology; eating habits; weight loss; partial least squares | |||
| Biometric Monitoring as a Persuasive Technology: Ensuring Patients Visit Health Centers in India's Slums | | BIBA | Full-Text | 169-180 | |
| Nupur Bhatnagar; Abhishek Sinha; Navkar Samdaria; Aakar Gupta; Shelly Batra; Manish Bhardwaj; William Thies | |||
| Managing chronic disease is particularly challenging in the developing world, because every trip to a health center can translate to lost time and wages on the part of the patient. This problem is especially acute for tuberculosis patients, who in India are required to visit a center over 40 times in the course of a six-month treatment period. In this paper, we explore the role of a biometric attendance terminal in persuading patients to complete follow-up health visits in slum communities of New Delhi, India. The terminal, which enrolled over 2,300 patients across 25 centers during our 2 years of observation, uses biometric fingerprint scanning to ensure that tuberculosis patients receive and take medications on the right schedule. We evaluate the perceived impact of the terminal via interviews with 8 health workers, 4 center owners, and 23 patients. Our findings suggest that the biometric terminal helps to draw patients to the center, both by incentivizing health workers to convince patients to come, and by persuading patients that in-person visits are important. | |||
| The Neural Persuasion Model: Aligning Neural Readiness, Perceived Need, and Intervention Strategies | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 181-192 | |
| Susan Ferebee; James Davis | |||
| An increasing body of information is being assembled to understand how
persuasive technology can be applied to develop successful persuasive health
systems. Both technology and human issues contribute to reduced success of some
persuasive systems. Neuroscience research has opened the door to improved
understanding of how humans process information during attitude formation,
attitude change, and during persuasion attempts. This article presents the
Neural Persuasion Model, which delves more deeply into the human component of
persuasion. The model draws on current neuroscience research and theories of
neural readiness and neural organization to suggest ways in which understanding
the neural activity of the brain might close the gap between persuasive
technology design and behavioral outcomes, particularly for addiction recovery
and other circumstances where neural disorder exists. Keywords: Persuasion; Attitude; Neuroscience; Persuasive Technology | |||
| Analyzing the Persuasion Context of the Persuasive Systems Design Model with the 3D-RAB Model | | BIBA | Full-Text | 193-202 | |
| Isaac Wiafe; Muna M. Alhammad; Keiichi Nakata; Stephen R. Gulliver | |||
| Research into design methodology is one of the most challenging issues in the field of persuasive technology. However, the introduction of the Persuasive Systems Design model, and the consideration of the 3-Dimensional Relationship between Attitude and Behavior, offer to make persuasive technologies more practically viable. In this paper we demonstrate how the 3-Dimensional Relationship between Attitude and Behavior guides the analysis of the persuasion context in the Persuasive System Design model. As a result, we propose a modification of the persuasion context and assert that the technology should be analyzed as part of strategy instead of event. | |||
| Towards a Data-Driven Approach to Intervention Design: A Predictive Path Model of Healthy Eating Determinants | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 203-214 | |
| Rita Orji; Regan L. Mandryk; Julita Vassileva | |||
| Dietary behavior and attitude play major roles in the worldwide prevalence
of obesity, as weight is gained when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure.
Although research has focused on designing technological interventions for
healthy eating behavior, recent reviews have identified a gap in the knowledge
base regarding the variables/determinants of healthy eating and the
interactions between them. We developed a model of some determinants and their
impact on healthy eating as a basis for designing technological interventions
to promote healthy eating behavior within a target community. The main goal of
this work is to understand how people adopt a healthy eating attitude, the
variables influencing such attitudes, the interactions between these variables,
and the degree of influence each variable exerts on healthy eating attitudes.
We use fast food-related eating behavior as our case study. Our model shows
that weight concern, nutrition knowledge, concern for diseases, social
influence, and food choice motives predicts 65% of the variance in healthy
eating attitudes, showing the suitability of the model for use in predicting
healthy eating attitude. This result will inform decisions on the most
effective persuasive strategy for designing interventions to promote healthy
eating behavior. Keywords: Dietary Behavior; persuasive intervention; predictive model; obesity;
theories; determinants; healthy eating; fast food behavior | |||
| Passengers' Safety in Aircraft Evacuations: Employing Serious Games to Educate and Persuade | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 215-226 | |
| Luca Chittaro | |||
| The field of persuasive technology has only recently started to investigate
how virtual experiences of risk can be used to change people's attitudes and
behaviors with respect to personal safety. In this paper, we aim at advancing
the investigation in different directions. First, we extend the study to
self-efficacy, which has been shown to be a predictor of future performance as
well as an important factor for persuasion attempts which show negative
consequences on people's health. Second, we increase the interactivity of the
virtual experience, by designing and implementing a full serious game, in which
the user can acquire knowledge about several aspects of her personal safety,
and we investigate also effects of the virtual experience on user's knowledge.
Third, we focus on an important problem to which serious games and persuasive
technology have never been applied before, i.e. educating passengers about
personal safety in aircraft evacuations. The experiment presented in the paper
shows how just playing the serious game for a few minutes results in
significant increases in user's knowledge and self-efficacy. Keywords: virtual reality; personal safety; serious games; simulated risk experiences;
self-efficacy; risk perception; air passengers; aircraft evacuation | |||
| Towards Persuasive Technology for Software Development Environments: An Empirical Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 227-238 | |
| Ingo Pribik; Alexander Felfernig | |||
| This paper describes an empirical study of a developed persuasive software
tool (PerSoDeMetrics) and its effects on the software engineering area. The
duration of the study was ten months. The persuasive tool was introduced for a
small development team in the real-world. The study tries to analyze the effect
of this tool being applied by software developers. The major goal was to
persuade software developers to focus on the improvement of their software
components. Based on this challenge we developed a plug-in which includes
persuasive technology mechanisms. The persuasive software tool is a
plug-in/extension in the development environment for Visual Studio 2010. It
calculates the software metrics and provides recommendations as how developers
can improve the quality of their software components. Keywords: Persuasive Technology; Software Quality; Software Usability; PSD model | |||
| Persuasive Technology Considered Harmful? An Exploration of Design Concerns through the TV Companion | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 239-250 | |
| Wolfgang Reitberger; Florian Güldenpfennig; Geraldine Fitzpatrick | |||
| Persuasive Technology has great potential to positively influence users in a
wide variety of areas such as health, well-being and environmental
sustainability. However, concerns have been raised regarding issues such as
surveillance, lack of autonomy and coercion that might be involved with the
application of such technologies. This paper articulates a set of design
concerns around these themes and presents a study of the TV Companion, an
instance of a behavior change system that takes into account these concerns.
The TV Companion is an application aimed to address the societal issue of
prolonged TV consumption with its related potential negative effects and aims
to foster more reflective TV viewing among children and their parents. To
explore the application of these design approaches in a real world setting we
report the findings of a field study of the TV companion in three families with
pre-school children and reflect on how the design concerns shaped the
experience and use of the TV companion. Keywords: design concerns; autonomy; surveillance; coercion; TV viewing; families;
prototype; field study | |||
| Bridging the Gap between the Home and the Lab: A Qualitative Study of Acceptance of an Avatar Feedback System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 251-255 | |
| Peter A. M. Ruijten; Yvonne de Kort; Petr Kosnar | |||
| The current study provides a first step in the design and development of a
persuasive agent in the natural context of the household. We developed two
persuasive probe studies: one paper-based probe and one email-based probe on
the use, experience, and effectiveness of persuasive agents. Participants had
used these prototypes for a week, after which their experiences were explored
in depth interviews and a focus group. Results indicated that a persuasive
agent in the household is experienced as fairly pleasant, but important issues
need to be solved before it can effectively influence behavior. Keywords: Persuasive Technology; Persuasive Probes; Sustainable behavior | |||
| Less Fizzy Drinks: A Multi-method Study of Persuasive Reminders | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 256-261 | |
| Sitwat Langrial; Harri Oinas-Kukkonen | |||
| In this paper, we present initial outcomes from our multi-method study that
explored the impact of reminders on effectiveness of information systems that
aim to facilitate behaviour change. Our study explicitly focused on reminders
as a key persuasive software feature that should be employed to support
behaviour change. We designed a prototype aiming to encourage people to
gradually reduce soda/fizzy drinks consumption. A multi-method 14-day pilot
study was conducted, composed of statistical analysis followed by a qualitative
focus group. Statistical analysis shows that participants consumed less fizzy
drinks in the second half of the study, and feedback from the focus group study
indicates that reminders successfully persuaded participants to keep a log of
their fizzy drink consumption. Our study supports the claim that persuasive
reminders have extraordinary potential for helping people change their
behaviours. Keywords: Behaviour change; persuasive systems design; persuasive features; reminders | |||
| Plotting to Persuade -- Exploring the Theoretical Cross Field between Persuasion and Learning | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 262-267 | |
| Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen; Henrik Schärfe; Jens Vilhelm Dinesen | |||
| This paper presents a few of the initial reflections related to ongoing
research on the notion of Persuasive Learning. In addition the paper briefly
comments upon some of the benefits and challenges related to the cross field
between persuasive technologies and learning objects, and between persuasion
and learning in general. Keywords: Persuasive Design; Pedagogy; Kairos; Didactics; e-PLOT | |||
| Does a Hyperlink Function as an Endorsement? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 268-273 | |
| Eric DiMuzio; S. Shyam Sundar | |||
| Websites often provide hyperlinks to other sites featuring related content.
Does this imply an endorsement of the content presented on those linked sites?
We answered this question with a 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial experiment in
which we systematically varied source credibility (high vs. low) and source
sequence (linking vs. linked). All study participants (N = 572) read a dubious
story questioning the value of sunscreen, with a link at the bottom to a
related story with the same claim. Results show that user perceptions of
interest value (i.e., appeal) do transfer over from the linking site to the
linked site. However, the source signal is quite salient when it comes to
evaluations of newsworthiness and trustworthiness, with users taking note of
the differences in credibility. Design implications of these findings for
persuasive communications are discussed. Keywords: Hyperlink; Link; Source; Endorsement; Persuasion | |||
| Comparative Analysis of Recognition and Competition as Features of Social Influence Using Twitter | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 274-279 | |
| Agnis Stibe; Harri Oinas-Kukkonen | |||
| This paper studies how and to what extent social influence design principles
can persuade people to participate in sharing their feedback. For this reason,
a Twitter-based system was designed with persuasive software features of social
influence at its core. The effects of recognition and competition features were
tested in a pilot study in two computer rooms simultaneously. Their effects on
the behavior of simulated airline travelers were compared. The main result of
this study provides evidence of several positive effects, especially regarding
the persuasive powers of recognition in a system's design. Keywords: Social influence; persuasive software features; Twitter; recognition;
competition; user participation; behavior change | |||