Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Cueing strategies, such as real-time reminders, are among the most effective methods of persuading individuals to perform healthy behaviors such as taking their medication and exercising. However, these reminders often represent a task interruption for users who are engaged in work activities. This paper presents the results of a study which explores strategies for interrupting users at work to perform a healthy behavior, in which the primary outcome of interest is long-term adherence to a desired health behavior change regimen. We find that the degree of perceived politeness of interruptions is positively correlated with predicted long-term adherence, but negatively correlated with short-term compliance. We also find that, among several interruption coordination strategies previously explored in the literature, empathic interruptions are superior overall in gaining both short-term compliance and long-term adherence.

Participation in regular physical activity (PA) is critical to sustaining good health. While a few attempts have been made to use internet-based interventions to promote PA, no system review has been conducted in determining the effectiveness of the intervention. The purpose of this study was to conduct a review under the framework of persuasive technology (PT). Based on a comprehensive of literature search, nice experimental studies were identified and evaluated using the PT functional triad defined by Fogg in 2003[1]. It was found that only two studies led to short-term impact in promoting PA and, furthermore, two studies have found that the intervention based traditional print materials worked better. From a perspective of PT, none of the studies designed its intervention based on the framework of captology and few took full advantages of PT functions. Designing new-generation, PT based internet intervention and examining related human factors are urgently needed.

By mapping critical psychological processes involved in an attempt at behavioral change, we can design digital programs to deliver specific cognitive therapy at the right moments, increasing the probability of successful behavioral change in a variety of domains. This breakthrough, named Digital Therapy, has been proven in random clinical trials to be a cost-effective way for people to achieve lasting behavioral change, with the help of modern psychological science, but without seeing a therapist.

In the United States, African Americans face a disproportionate amount of diet-related health problems. For example, African American adults are 1.6 times more likely to have diabetes than their Caucasian counterparts. Individuals in low-income communities may face a greater risk because they typically have less access to healthy foods. Due to the significant diet-related problems within the African American community, public health researchers call for approaches to health promotion that take into account the relationship between culture and dietary habits. In this paper, we discuss three important considerations for the design of technologies that address the diet-related health disparities in low-income African American communities. These considerations include designing for cultural relevancy, modeling health behavior, and encouraging healthy behavior through the use of social psychological theories of persuasion. We use a game design example to illustrate how each of these considerations can be incorporated into the development of new technology.

Persuasive games are a relatively new phenomenon, and hold promise as effective vehicles for persuasion. As yet, however, there are few set rules guiding how to design persuasive games to be interesting, compelling, and effective. Furthermore, little theory exists that guides their development from a persuasive technology (PT) perspective. The results of a recent pilot test on , our persuasive game about smoking cessation, highlighted several design issues related to persuasive games in general. In this paper we discuss some of those issues, contextualizing them in terms of B J Fogg’s PT strategies, in order to both explain underlying forces, and point towards potential design solutions. The five issues we discuss are: , and .

Is it possible to motivate users of an application through software elements? Is it also possible to do so for business applications? Having a long lasting, monotone, little challenging work task does not motivate users a lot in continuing a task, especially if this task comes up regularly, like typing numbers or addresses. We found software patterns - design recommendations – that keep a user working on such a task. We validated one of them in an experiment and found out that it is possible to motivate users through captivating software elements.

Engaging computer games can be used to change energy consumption patterns in the home. PowerAgent is a pervasive game for Java-enabled mobile phones that is designed to influence everyday activities and use of electricity in the domestic setting. PowerAgent is connected to the household’s automatic electricity meter reading equipment via the cell network, and this setup makes it possible to use actual consumption data in the game. In this paper, we present a two-level model for cognitive and behavior learning, and we discuss the properties of PowerAgent in relation to the underlying situated learning, social learning, and persuasive technology components that we have included in the game.

Computational agents can motivate people to change their behaviour towards energy use in a home setting. In this paper, we investigate the design and evaluation of the iParrot, an intelligent agent that helps to persuade family members to conserve energy in their home. The iParrot was designed as a concept in the form of a video prototype with two conditions. The results from the evaluation show that people will comply with the advice from such an agent for energy conservation if the agent is friendlier. Moreover, participants were able to distinctly perceive the friendliness level for both conditions.

The development of an interactive “pet” house plant could provide the same positive health support functions as a robotic pet, and with fewer problems, if it could be shown that an emotional attachment with a human was possible. This required that an inanimate living artifact (the plant) along with its pot, be accepted as stimulating emergent emotion. An experiment comparing an interactive, apparently aware, plant with a control was conducted in three retirement homes. Individuals were found to attribute emotions to the interactive plant that increased if the plant was described as having a character similar to that of the user. Results of the study support the conclusion that interactive plants have potential for further development as supportive companions to the elderly.

An increasing number of persuasive technology systems consist of multiple devices that enable efficient just-in-time interaction with the user. Developing multi-device systems to support a human activity bring about new challenges for interaction and user experience design. The main challenge identified in this paper is the successful designing of coherent user experience, which may improve user acceptance and have a positive effect on the overall persuasiveness of the system. This paper analyses a multi-device heart-rate monitoring environment to illustrate the target of our research. We propose the notion of as a key concept for studying the design of efficient persuasive technology systems consisting of multiple devices.