A persuasive approach to designing interactive tools around the promises and perils of social platforms

Every day, people interact with various social platforms. Diverse forms of social platforms opened up a plethora of data to study information dissemination and understanding crowd behavior in finer details. However, there is a flip side to this. People do not only get benefited by using social platforms; rather these platforms can also be exploited for spreading organized disinformation and unintended misinformation to a large audience. These social platforms, with access to the history of users' socio-political biases, can emerge as tools to shape mass opinion. Such a broad spectrum of diversity raises questions about how we can identify the promises and perils of social platforms and how we can design user-centric tools around them. Efficient identification of such promises and perils of social computing systems will require a convergence of social science, behavioral psychology, and persuasion theory with computing. My research shows ways to this convergence. In my dissertation, I have taken a theoretical approach to explain the existing structures of social platforms. My findings helped me to develop interactive tools for masses leveraging socio-political and psychological cues from the crowd. My work is empirical in nature, for which I drew intuitions from theories in social science and used a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques to extract insights on users' behavior. My research leads to practical systems for human-centric applications and to this end, I chose a specific type of social platform: crowdfunding platform. Specifically, this dissertation makes three contributions. First, it investigates how different forms of crowdfunding platforms become promising resources in our daily life. To this end, I present two work. The first work demonstrates how scientific crowdfunding platforms assist young researchers to seek funding for their research projects through expert endorsements. The second work focuses on the novice entrepreneurs and explains how enterprise crowdfunding platforms assist novices to gather funding from the crowd for their creative ideas and how persuasive promotional videos are essential for those campaigns to be successful. The findings of this work led to the next part of this dissertation where I designed and built VidLyz, an interactive online tool, that can explain the significance and implication of persuasion factors to novice entrepreneurs who have no formal training in advertising and media studies. A follow-up user study showed that VidLyz can effectively guide novices step-by-step to make a concrete plan for their campaign videos. Finally, I take a step further and investigates the flip side of social platforms: how social platforms can increase onion polarization on traditionally stigmatized topics such as equal rights for LGBTIQ people. I show that even after getting exposed to content both in favor of and against equal rights for LGBTIQ people simultaneously, users develop a more polarized opinion on the stigmatized issue after the exposure. In the last part, this dissertation shows promising ways to mitigate the effect of attitude polarization and in-group sensitization with the help of behavioral priming techniques. The findings of this dissertation present structured ways of uncovering the promises and perils of social platforms and shows how these aspects can be leveraged to build interactive socio-technical systems. Overall, it may be fair to see this dissertation as a step forward to design socio-technical systems based on the knowledge learned from the interaction of the users of social platforms

Design and design thinking in business and management education and development

Design and design thinking have been identified as making valuable contributions to business and management and the numbers of higher education programs that teach design thinking to business students, managers and executives are growing. However multiple definitions of design thinking and the range of perspectives have created some confusion about potential pathways. This paper examines notions of design and design thinking and uses these definitions to identify themes in higher educational programs. We present the findings from an initial exploratory investigation of design and design thinking in higher education business programs and define four distinct educational approaches around human centred innovation, integrative thinking, design management and design as strategy. Potential directions for management education programs are presented

Drama in the Delta: Digitally Reenacting Civil Rights Performances at Arkansas' Wartime Camps for Japanese Americans

DRAMA IN THE DELTA will produce an interactive 3D model of key historic sites from the WWII Arkansas Delta in order to digitally simulate the systems of racial segregation that governed home-front life when black-white Jim Crow laws intersected with the policies of two local internment camps for Americans of Japanese descent. Rohwer and Jerome each imprisoned a peak wartime population of 8,500; these were the only War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps in the American South and the only to house Hawaiians of Japanese descent. The wartime internment in general has not entered most Americans' consciousness. The popularity of interactive role-playing games (RPGs) presents an effective pedagogical medium to capture public interest: by creating a historically accurate RPG reenacting 1944 Arkansas, DRAMA IN THE DELTA will engage the problem-solving behaviors of "gamers," and use this active learning environment to teach about civil liberties--struggles that were eventually triumphant

Understanding and Applying Design Thinking

The intent of this project was to gain an in-depth understanding of design thinking, both by internalizing its principles and fundamentals and applying them to an actual design challenge. I began with an extensive review of the literature and also interviewed an experienced design thinking practitioner. I then completed an 8-week online course in design thinking offered by the University of Virginia, which provided instruction in a 15-step approach to design thinking as well as key tools to use in the approach. Finally, I applied this approach to a design challenge owned by a leading consultancy in New York City. I detailed key learnings I had from both applying the process as well as comparing the approach to the Thinking Skills Model of Creative Problem Solving (Puccio, Murdock, & Mance, 2007). I concluded with both professional and personal actions that I plan to take as a result of learnings from this project

Towards Learning ‘Self’ and Emotional Knowledge in Social and Cultural Human-Agent Interactions

Original article can be found at: http://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?ID=35052 Copyright IGI. Posted by permission of the publisher.This article presents research towards the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) inhabited by intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and modeling a scenario of inter-cultural interactions. The ultimate aim of this VLE is to allow users to reflect upon and learn about intercultural communication and collaboration. Rather than predefining the interactions among the virtual agents and scripting the possible interactions afforded by this environment, we pursue a bottomup approach whereby inter-cultural communication emerges from interactions with and among autonomous agents and the user(s). The intelligent virtual agents that are inhabiting this environment are expected to be able to broaden their knowledge about the world and other agents, which may be of different cultural backgrounds, through interactions. This work is part of a collaborative effort within a European research project called eCIRCUS. Specifically, this article focuses on our continuing research concerned with emotional knowledge learning in autobiographic social agents.Peer reviewe

Benefits of Video Presentations in Product Design

Product Design uses a human-centered process to develop solutions that solve unmet user needs. Because of the sequential nature of this activity, final designs are often presented in printed process books or digital slideshows, which visually communicate the development of the solution from start to finish rather than focusing just on the final result. Storytelling is a key element to consider when creating these process books in order to communicate the design solution as well as where it came from. An alternative to these presentations is the use of short videos, which offer the advantage of communicating the design process with a richer narrative and engaging style. The use of videos for final presentations both in the classroom and in professional practice offers a wider array of opportunities for effective storytelling of design projects while reaching a broader audience

Development of the Tsai Design Thinking Scale

Design thinking is a human-centered creative problem-solving approach in the service of innovation. Design thinking involves both analytical and creative thinking; reasoning and imaging are both necessary to face design challenges of different degrees. Although a number of theories have been proposed, a lack of empirical validation of design thinking framework needs to be addressed in order to move forward. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to create an assessment instrument that can measure the degree to which an individual can use design thinking abilities. The Tsai Design Thinking Scale (TDTS) was initially developed with the initial item pool including 36 items. Based on the results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the 16-Item TDTS with four factors shows a reliable and valid measure.  Overall, the TDTS indicates that it is suitable for assessing stable design thinking based on the perceptions of college students and that it is in line with theoretical expectations Keywords: Design thinking, Taiwanese college students, measure development, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysi

A Look into the Design Process: Theory Driven Design for Behavior Change

abstract: As the designer is asked to design, create, or simply solve a problem, many factors go into that process. It generally begins with defining the scope or problem that undergoes an iterative process utilizing different tools and techniques to generate the desired outcome. This is often referred to as the design process. Notwithstanding the many factors that influence this process, this study investigates the use of theory for behavior change and its effect on the design process. While social behavioral theories have been extensively discussed in the realm of design, and a well-developed body of literature exists, there is limited knowledge about how designers respond to and incorporate theory into their design process. Fogg’s persuasive design (2003), Lockton’s design with intent (2009) and Tromp’s social implication framework (2011) stand as exemplars of new strategies developed towards design for behavior change that are able to empower designers’ mindsets, providing them with a uniquely insightful perspective to entice change. Instead of focusing on the effectiveness of the design end product, this study focuses on how theory-driven approaches affect the ideation and framing fragment of the design process. A workshop case study with senior design students was utilized with focused observations and post-workshop interviews to answer the research questions. This study contributes by providing a useful method of documenting a behavioral economics theory to the design process in a workshop setting. It also provides insights on how behavioral change theory application can be incorporated in a segment of the design process.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Design 201