Sustainable Transformation of Individuals and Families: Design and Implementation of Holistic Personalised Socially Driven Persuasive Systems

Sustainability is a topic that has matured and has evolved from organisational sustain ability to societal sustainability and more recently to individual sustainability. As an individual is the core, basic component of society, and plays a critical role in societal transformation, there is growing interest and discussions on individual sustainability and wellbeing. Since the publication of Our Common Future – the report commis sioned by the UN General Assembly in tackling environmental and natural resources issues – the concept of ‘sustainable development’ has taken root in firms and govern ments, both in optimising their supply chain and in the planning of the sustainability of the society. However, counterintuitively, the fabric of the society – individuals and families – has been neglected in this journey of understanding their roles in sustaina bility, as well as in the nexus between their decisions and social outcomes. This thesis bridges the gap. Sustainability is a transformative process of improving the quality of lives by balancing various of our life aspects, such as economic, ecological, and societal dimensions. In this process, information systems often take a critical part as an analytical tool, which provides insightful decision support and recommendations based on collected data and information. In contrast to systems employed by corporates and governments, the development of sustainability systems for individuals and families is still in its infancy. Existing systems mostly are only focusing on one aspect of life and prescribe a single dimensional solution, without regard to the contextual and circumstantial complexi ties of life. In this light, this thesis aims to design and implement systems that adopt a holistic approach in understanding users’ individualistic needs, and in synthesising their life status and goals. The vision is to recognise the multifaceted aspirations of the users, and to nudge them toward a lifestyle that is sustainable, practical, and, above all, enjoyable. To realise this vision, the thesis adopts the multimethodological design science approaches (Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004; Nunamaker, Chen, & Purdin, 1991) with the design eval uation methods from Hevner, March, Park, and Ram (2004) to address the challenges. ii First, the thesis defines individual and family sustainability and a set of nine principles named SSHARRPPP (Sustainable, Social, Holistic, Adaptive, Real-time, Real-world, Precise, Personalised, Persuasive). Based on these principles, the thesis develops sus tainable transformative processes that are applied to key activities and can bring fun damental changes for one’s life. From these conceptual and procedural foundations, the thesis designs system architectures and implements four systems as proof of con cepts. They are, namely, the SSHARRPPP Measurement, Shopping, Modelling, and Games. SSHARRPPP systems support individual and family sustainability holistically as they work together seamlessly. SSHARRPPP Measurement and Shopping measure key ac tivities that are performed by individuals and families. Based on the measured data, SSHARRPPP Modelling grasps causal effect relationships of one’s life dimensions and develops models. Lastly, SSHARRPPP Games helps people to stick with sustainable lives by making their journey enjoyable. All systems are designed to educate people to transform their lives. During the research, all of these conceptual, procedural, and sys tem artefacts are validated through publications, presentations and peer-review pro cesses. This thesis fills the gap in individual and family sustainability by bringing understand ing of human nature and systems together. Taken as a whole, it provides holistic un derstanding on sustainable life transformation and benefits researchers in both infor mation systems and sustainability. The thesis also lays the ground for future work in health and self-management, as it provides system solutions by synthesising core ideas from purposes of life and values, various human processes, and mechanisms to trans form our lives. At the practical level, the system architecture and the applications guide the system developers to design and implement systems for the sustainable transfor mation of individuals and families. Importantly, this thesis benefits individuals and families by making their sustainable life transformations holistic

SHARPP Games for the Education Prevention and Reversion of Chronic Diseases

Prevalence of chronic diseases has become a serious problem in our society. These illnesses are commonly caused by dietary and lifestyle risk factors and are hard to cure completely. However, behavioral changes such as adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle are effective in reducing chronic conditions. In this research, we propose to build games that could support the Sustainable transformation of chronic patients in a Holistic and Adaptable manner using Real-time, Precise, and Persuasive (SHARPP) principles, processes, systems, and technologies. This research leverages wearable information technologies and chronic disease studies to design games that interweave virtual worlds with the real world. It not only supports patients to form healthy habits that prevent and revert chronic diseases but also helps individuals to balance various life dimensions

Individual and Family Sustainability: The Measure-Model-Entertain-Transform Approach

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the UN have become central to the vision and mission of national institutions, corporate enterprises, and governments (Kates, Parris, & Leiserowitz, 2005). Although many SDGs has social issues at their core, unfortunately individuals and families are neglected in main stream sustainability discussions. However, individuals and families are the basic unit of society and their sustainability is as important as the organization, industry, and country level sustainability. The key of sustainable transformation of individual and family is balancing the various life dimensions, such as health, wealth, career, family, social relationships, and personal development. It is well understood that these life dimensions are interrelated. However, existing systems do not support sustainable transformation, nor do they allow individuals and families to examine interrelationships and impacts between life dimensions. Modelling holistic interrelationships between life dimensions can educate people to make sustainable decisions and ultimately transform their lives. Modelling and simulation can transform us by describing our current life situations, explaining how life dimensions impact each other, and predicting how our lives can be changed (Rouse & Morris, 1986). One critical challenge is to provide personalized, persuasive education that leads to transformation. To address this challenge, we propose the “measure-model-entertain-transform” approach as illustrated below. We believe that we cannot manage what we don’t measure, and we cannot understand and transform what we don’t model. Hence, measuring individuals and families on various life dimensions and modelling their interactions are at the heart of the approach. Even if we measure and model if we cannot persuade individuals to change and adapt through entertainment, education will be of no avail nor will transformation occur. Thus, we propose serious games and gamification as the third and critical step leading to education and transformation. We have implemented 4 proof of concept prototypes that support each step of the approach and are in the process of validating them

Persuasive Serious Social Health Games for Managing Diabetes

Prevalence of chronic diseases is becoming a serious problem facing our society. Many of these diseases are caused due to dietary and lifestyle risk factors and can be perceived as hard to cure. However, behavioural changes such as adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle are effective in reducing chronic conditions. Lifestyle-related diseases are now being combated through the use of ICT-based systems and persuasive technologies to help change lifestyle and manage diseases. We can observe the adoption of serious health games as an aid to persuade individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles. This research leverages information technologies and type 2 diabetes studies to design games that can act as a catalyst to educate, prevent and reverse type 2 diabetes, especially among the Maori and Pacific Island communities. These games not only support the formation of healthy habits but also helps individuals to work together collectively towards a healthier life that embraces their uniqueness