Persuasive design of a mobile energy conservation game with direct feedback and social cues

Pervasive gaming has the potential of transforming the home into a persuasive environment in which the user can learn about appliances and their electricity consumption. Power Explorer is a mobile game with a special sensing approach that provides real-time electricity measurements and feedback when the user switches on and off devices in the home. The game was developed based on persuasive principles to provide an engaging means to learn about energy with positive and negative feedback and social feedback from peers on real energy actions in the home. We present the design and rationale of this game and discuss how pervasive games can be viewed from a persuasive and learning point of view

Evaluation of a Pervasive Game for Domestic Energy Engagement Among Teenagers

In this article, we present Power Agent—a pervasive game designed to encourage teenagers and their families to reduce energy consumption in the home. The ideas behind this mobile phonebased game are twofold; to transform the home environment and its devices into a learning arena for hands-on experience with electricity usage and to promote engagement via a team competition scheme. We report on the game’s evaluation with six teenagers and their families who played the game for ten days in two cities in Sweden. Data collection consisted of home energy measurements before, during, and after a game trial, in addition to interviews with participants at the end of the evaluation. The results suggest that the game concept was highly efficient in motivating and engaging the players and their families to change their daily energy-consumption patterns during the game trial. Although the evaluation does not permit any conclusions as to whether the game had any postgame effects on behavior, we can conclude that the pervasive persuasive game approach appears to be highly promising in regard to energy conservation and similar fields or issues

Power Explorer – a casual game style for encouraging long term behavior change among teenagers

When it comes to motivating teenagers towards energy awareness, new approaches need to be considered. One such is the use of pervasive games connected to the players own energy consumption. Earlier work has confirmed this to be a highly effective approach. The question however remains if post game effects on behavior can be achieved. In this paper we try to answer this by trying out a slightly different design compared to previous work. The hypothesis is that a more casual game play and a richer learning interaction enabled by building the game on a real time sensor system could stimulate more lasting effects. Electric consumption data after the 7 days evaluation on a test group of 15 players shows tentative indications for a persistent post game effect compared to the control group of 20 households. Findings also show a statistically significant positive change in the players’ attitude towards saving energy compared to the same group. Findings, at the same time, also indicate a negative effect on the player’s attitude toward environmental questions in general

I�ve Got to Play That Game - An Analysis of Embedded Persuasion in Game Design

We explore the role of persuasion in game design through a combination of cognitive biases, the roles of the individual and society in persuasive game design and game play. We examine the role of scarce player resources in the areas of monetary, temporal, spatial and cognitive spheres on the persuasive nature of a game. We argue that a persuasive game contains three distinct elements: the element of surprise and attention, the element of alignment with cultural norms and the element of tradeoff between player resources and incentives to play the game. We also present the ethical implications of persuasive game design

Competing or aiming to be average?: Normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems

Motivating sustainable goal choices and providing effective feedback

Overconsumption of natural resources and the associated environmental hazards are one of today’s most pressing global issues. In the western world, individual consumption in homes and workplaces is a key contributor to this problem. Reflecting the importance of individual action in this domain, this thesis focuses on studying and influencing choices related to sustainability and energy consumption made by people in their daily lives. There are three main components to this work. Firstly, this thesis asserts that people frequently make ineffective consumption reduction goal choices and attempts to understand the rationale for these poor choices by fitting them to goalsetting theory, an established theoretical model of behavior change. Secondly, it presents two approaches that attempt to influence goal choice towards more effective targets, one of which deals with mechanisms for goal priming and the other of which explores the idea that carefully designed toys can exert influence on children’s long term consumption behavior patterns. The final section of this thesis deals with the design of feedback to support the performance of environmentally sound activities. Key contributions surrounding goals include the finding that people choose easy sustainable goals despite immediate feedback as to their ineffectiveness and the discussion and study of goal priming mechanisms that can influence this choice process. Contributions within the design of value instilling toys include a theoretically grounded framework for the design of such toys and a completed and tested prototype toy. Finally, contributions in designing effective and engaging energy consumption feedback include the finding that negative feedback is best presented verbally compared with visually and this is exemplified and presented within a working feedback system. The discussions, concepts, prototypes and empirical findings presented in this work will be useful for both environmental psychologists and for HCI researchers studying eco-feedback

Changing environmental behaviors through smartphone-based augmented experiences

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestrado em Engenharia de InformáticaThe use of persuasive technologies can induce changes in attitudes or behaviours, even in individuals that other strategies of persuasion can not reach effectively. In addition, this type of technology can be applied in numerous areas such as health, education, finance, e-business, among others. Although persuasion can be seen as something negative, being used to serve the interests of the persuader rather than the interests of the persuaded, this work aims to achieve a common and shared goal: to change people's behaviour towards the environment. A significant part of the population is still not aware of the sustainability problems that our planet is facing, so it is important to inform people about the theme while persuading them to change their behaviour and acquire proenvironmental attitudes. In this dissertation, work was conducted to alert citizens to this issue in a fun and immersive way using mobile devices, more specifically smartphones, and augmented reality technology that was used to create an environmental scanner. This scanner provided the user with informative insight about the surrounding environment, while highlighting the environmental threats. In addition to augmented reality, pro-environmental actions were positively reinforced using a reward system and a virtual character that interacted and motivated the user. A form of rapid spread through social networks was also created, allowing the persuasive effect to quickly reach a large number of users. Finally was performed a study to assess the success of the work done in changing behaviour towards environmental issues, and to study the influence of augmented reality and positive reinforcement in the changing of behaviours and acquisition of pro-environmental attitudes

IMPROVING RESIDENTIAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION AT LARGE USING PERSUASIVE SYSTEMS

The paper presents a persuasive web application that stimulates residential energy conservation. The users of the application received consumption feedback that is based on electricity meter readings which they entered over a period of 6 months and which accounted for specific household characteristics. In a large scale field study which we conducted between April and September of 2010, 6’921 participants used the application. From a research perspective, the system allowed us to experimentally assess the effects of different socio-psychological concepts with regard to different measures such as popularity, choice, and energy conservation. The large user base and the real-world setting contributed to the validity of the findings. The discussion presented is structured along a behavioural change framework we adapted from Ölander’s and J. Thøgersen’s motivation – ability – opportunity model. Besides presenting the quantitative results of multiple studies and providing theoretical cues to outline the mechanisms behind the behaviour, we formulate guidelines that support the development of similar applications in research and industry

Wearables at work:preferences from an employee’s perspective

This exploratory study aims to obtain a first impression of the wishes and needs of employees on the use of wearables at work for health promotion. 76 employ-ees with a mean age of 40 years old (SD ±11.7) filled in a survey after trying out a wearable. Most employees see the potential of using wearable devices for workplace health promotion. However, according to employees, some negative aspects should be overcome before wearables can effectively contribute to health promotion. The most mentioned negative aspects were poor visualization and un-pleasantness of wearing. Specifically for the workplace, employees were con-cerned about the privacy of data collection