DESIGN FOR BEHAVIOUR CHANGE: A MODEL-DRIVEN APPROACH FOR TAILORING PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGIES

People generally want to engage in a healthy lifestyle, to live in harmony with the environment, to contribute to social causes, and to avoid behaviours that are harmful for themselves and others. However, people often find it difficult to motivate themselves to engage in these beneficial behaviours. Even adopting a healthy lifestyle, such as healthy eating, physical activity, or smoking cessation, is hard despite being aware of the benefits. The increasing adoption and integration of technologies into our daily lives present unique opportunities to assist individuals to adopt healthy behaviours using technology. As a result, research on how to use technology to motivate health behaviour change has attracted the attention of both researchers and health practitioners. Technology designed for the purpose of bringing about desirable behaviour and attitude changes is referred to as Persuasive Technology (PT). Over the past decade, several PTs have been developed to motivate healthy behaviour, including helping people with addictive behaviour such as substance abuse, assisting individuals to achieve personal wellness, helping people manage diseases, and engaging people in preventive behaviours. Most of these PTs take a one-size-fits-all design approach. However, people differ in their motivation and beliefs about health and what constitutes a healthy life. A technology that motivates one type of person to change her behaviour may actually deter behaviour change for another type of person. As a result, existing PTs that are based on the one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective for promoting healthy behaviour change for most people. Because of the motivational pull that games offer, many PTs deliver their intervention in the form of games. This type of game-based PTs are referred to as persuasive games. Considering the increasing interest in delivering PT as a game, this dissertation uses persuasive games as a case study to illustrate the danger of applying the one-size-fits-all approach, the value and importance of tailoring PT, and to propose an approach for tailoring PTs to increase their efficacy. To address the problem that most existing PTs employ the one-size-fits-all design approach, I developed the Model-driven Persuasive Technology (MPT) design approach for tailoring PTs to various user types. The MPT is based on studying and modelling user’s behaviour with respect to their motivations. I developed the MPT approach in two preliminary studies (N = 221, N = 554) that model the determinants of healthy eating for people from different cultures, of different ages, and of both genders. I then applied the MPT approach in two large-scale studies to develop models for tailoring persuasive games to various gamer types. In the first study (N = 642), I examine eating behaviours and associated determinants, using the Health Belief Model. Using data from the study, I modelled the determinants of healthy eating behaviour for various gamer types. In the second study (N = 1108), I examined the persuasiveness of PT design strategies and developed models for tailoring the strategies to various gamer types. Behavioural determinants and PT design strategies are the two fundamental building blocks that drive PT interventions. The models revealed that some strategies were more effective for particular gamer types, thus, providing guidelines for tailoring persuasive games to various gamer types. To show the feasibility of the MPT design approach, I applied the model to design and develop two versions of a Model-driven Persuasive Game (MPG) targeting two distinct gamer types. To demonstrate the importance of tailoring persuasive games using the MPG approach, I conducted a large-scale evaluation (N = 802) of the two versions of the game and compared the efficacy of the tailored, contra-tailored, and the one-size-fits-all persuasive games condition with respect to their ability to promote positive changes in attitude, self-efficacy, and intention. To also demonstrate that the tailored MPG games inspire better play experience than the one-size-fits-all and the contra-tailored persuasive games, I measure the gamers’ perceived enjoyment and competence under the different game conditions. The results of the evaluation showed that while PTs can be effective for promoting healthy behaviour in terms of attitude, self-efficacy, and intention, the effectiveness of persuasion depends on using the right choice of persuasive strategy for each gamer type. The results showed that one size does not fit all and answered my overarching research question of whether there is a value in tailoring PT to an individual or group. The answer is that persuasive health interventions are more effective if they are tailored to the user types under consideration and that not tailoring PTs could be detrimental to behaviour change

Tailoring persuasive health games to gamer type

Persuasive games are an effective approach for motivating health behavior, and recent years have seen an increase in games designed for changing human behaviors or attitudes. However, these games are limited in two major ways: first, they are not based on theories of what motivates healthy behavior change. This makes it difficult to evaluate why a persuasive approach works. Second, most persuasive games treat players as a monolithic group. As an attempt to resolve these weaknesses, we conducted a large-scale survey of 642 gamers' eating habits and their associated determinants of healthy behavior to understand how health behavior relates to gamer type. We developed seven different models of healthy eating behavior for the gamer types identified by BrainHex. We then explored the differences between the models and created two approaches for effective persuasive game design based on our results. The first is a one-size-fits-all approach that will motivate the majority of the population, while not demotivating any players. The second is a personalized approach that will best motivate a particular type of gamer. Finally, to make our approaches actionable in persuasive game design, we map common game mechanics to the determinants of healthy behavior

Factors Influencing User’s Attitude to Secondary Information Sharing and Usage

The increasing availability of enormous data about users online, along with availability of sophisticated tools and technology to store, aggregate, and analyze data for secondary use has raised concerns about how to balance the opportunity for secondary use of data with the need to protect the user privacy that may result from harmful use. To develop a privacy protection mechanism that is useful and meets the expectations and needs of the user, it is important to understand user’s attitude to privacy and secondary information sharing and usage of his/her data. While several studies have investigated factors influencing user’s attitude to privacy in primary data collection context, none of the existing studies have provided an understanding of user perception and attitude to privacy in secondary context. To fill this gap, this work has identified five factors that are important in a secondary usage context and carried out a study on their influence on user’s perception with respect to how their data is shared for secondary use. The main contribution of this paper is an understanding of factors influencing user decisions about privacy in secondary context, which can assist both technology designers and policy makers in the development of appropriate privacy protection that meets the needs and expectations of the user.</p

The enemy within:designing a cell-based gameplay system for cancer education

This paper outlines the design and preliminary evaluation of The Enemy Within, a browser-based game produced to raise awareness of the nature of cancer as a progressive disease. Aimed at high school and young adult audiences, the ambition with the game is to make visible to players the myriad ways in which healthy cells can mutate and ultimately inherit hallmarks of cancer, whilst also demonstrating how both real-world behaviours and underlying genetics impact both positively and negatively on cell health

Are Social Media Design Practices Marginalising Other Cultures?

We argue that the current practice of social media design might have inadvertently ‘othered’ African cultures in place of stereotypical traditions and values that inform the practice of innovation globally. It is our understanding that sustainable and sensitive approaches that integrate with the aspirations and lived conditions of diverse marginalised communities ought to form the basis for the approaches used in understanding and designing social media platforms. We also emphasise the need to critically and sensibility analyse the sociocultural implication of using mobile technologies and social platforms to the process of harnessing the social practices of the communities that they get adopted and used. It is our position that examining the multitude of Nigerian cultures and values might bring about a better understanding of the societal implications of ‘Instagramming in Nigeria’ and the use of mobile technologies in intimate spaces among married couples and adults in relationships

Inclusive Positionality:How HCI Brought us Together

This position paper documents the reasoning behind working together as interdisciplinary researchers thinking and investigating technological issues with and for the Nigerian population. It presents ideas that point to how our differences in positionalities, specifically cultural identity, gender, social values, religious beliefs, power relations, language and intellectual locale might influence and impact the practice of examining the social implications of mobile technologies and social platforms non-use, use, misuse and over-use to the psychological and physiological wellbeing and digital safety of different actors. We hope that our research and co-design practice would point to how differences in researchers and research participants values are negotiated and absorbed while providing inclusive and sustainable design insights

A panoramic view of personalization based on individual differences in persuasive and behavior change interventions

Persuasive technologies are designed to change human behavior or attitude using various persuasive strategies. Recent years have witnessed increasing evidence of the need to personalize and adapt persuasive interventions to various users and contextual factors because a persuasive strategy that works for one individual may rather demotivate others. As a result, several research studies have been conducted to investigate how to effectively personalize persuasive technologies. As research in this direction is gaining increasing attention, it becomes essential to conduct a systematic review to provide an overview of the current trends, challenges, approaches used for developing personalized persuasive technologies, and opportunities for future research in the area. To fill this need, we investigate approaches to personalize persuasive interventions by understanding user-related factors considered when personalizing persuasive technologies. Particularly, we conducted a systematic review of 72 research published in the last ten years in personalized and adaptive persuasive systems. The reviewed papers were evaluated based on different aspects, including metadata (e.g., year of publication and venue), technology, personalization dimension, personalization approaches, target outcome, individual differences, theories and scales, and evaluation approaches. Our results show (1) increased attention toward personalizing persuasive interventions, (2) personality trait is the most popular dimension of individual differences considered by existing research when tailoring their persuasive and behavior change systems, (3) students are among the most commonly targeted audience, and (4) education, health, and physical activity are the most considered domains in the surveyed papers. Based on our results, the paper provides insights and prospective future research directions