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Most recent todos:

• Fri, Sep 22 – Still Unregistered
• Tue, Sep 19 – Affordances
• Tue, Sep 05 – Quiz open

       
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░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  FA2023  ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

Mini-project 1: Persuasive technology

Goals

The goal of this project is to give you hands-on practice in designing persuasive technology.

After doing this project you will be able to:

• Use iterative design to improve and flesh out early design ideas.
• Design a technology that uses BJ Fogg’s captology model to influence users to change their behavior.
• Use sketches and text to compellingly convey design ideas.
• Construct a strong, specific argument for how design is intended to work.

Overview

In this project, you will develop and flesh out a concept design for a persuasive technology to address a social issue that you care about.

Instructions

1. Identify a social or political issue that you care about. (1 sentence)
2. Related to this issue, identify a concrete behavior that people engage in that you would like your device to help them change. (1 phrase)
3. As an early brainstorm, quickly sketch out 3 different ideas for how a persuasive technology could intervene to help people change that behavior. Each of the ideas should use a single different persuasive affordance and that affordance should be named: see list at bottom of this page. (a few bullet points each, optionally including an image)
   • Note that for this assignment, a persuasive technology must be a technology (not eg. a policy)
   • Note that persuasive technologies are not, generally speaking, speculative.
4. Sleep on your first ideas.
5. Reflecting on your first concepts and using the skills of brainstorming and variation, continue your ideation. The idea you decide to work with may build on the best of your original ideas, it may synthesize ideas from different designs, or it may react to your first ideas by developing a new concept.
6. Develop your final idea into a full-fledged design. This design should include the following elements:
   1. A precise description of the behavior you would like to change, and how it relates to the issue that matters to you (ca 1 paragraph). Make sure this behavior is specific, observable, and measurable (cf persuasive computing lecture).
   2. A description of the mechanism the device or application will use to persuade users to change the behavior. This description should identify the persuasive affordance you are using, explain how the device instantiates that affordance, and describe how you expect the workings of the device to change the behavior in question. (ca 400 words)
   3. A visual sketch of the interface of the device. What will it actually look like when used? The point of the sketch is to convey your ideas, not to display artistic skills. Annotate your sketch to explain how the features of the device are instantiated. (1 page hand drawing; may also be sketched electronically)
   4. A persuasive argument for why the device has a good chance to be effective at inducing behavior change, drawing on the details of design and reflecting understanding of the readings on persuasive design. You argument should take into account potential pitfalls of this design and conditions under which it could reasonably be used differently from how it is intended (200-300 words)

Submission

Deliverables:

1. Your three early design sketches. The “sketch” may be in words, or include an image. Each sketch must clearly be labelled with the specific affordance it builds on.
2. Your final design, including the 4 elements described in step 6 of the instructions (behavior description; mechanism description; visual sketch; argument for effectiveness).

Your project is due electronically via submission to Canvas by 11:59pm on 2023-09-29. Both deliverables will be included in a single file upload. Your submission must be in .pdf format. Passages beyond the word limits will not be counted toward the assignment. If you prefer to do design work with your hands, you may do your project on paper and submit photos of the result embedded in a .pdf.

Grading rubric

Your grade will consist of the following elements:

1. 9 points: Effective, accurate early sketching: 3 early conceptual sketches that correctly reflect different persuasive affordances. The sketches explore clearly different parts of the design space.
2. 6 points: Behavior precision: Description of target behavior is precise and clearly connected to the social impact issue of interest.
3. 20 points: Persuasive mechanism design: Mechanism design which reflects the persuasive technology design direction by (a) tying clearly into the behavior of interest, (b) being compelling for the target audience to use (c) being robust in the face of likely use (and nonuse), and (d) persuading rather than coercing. This part of your grade is based on your mechanism description, sketch of the device, and your persuasive argument.
4. 5 points: Design quality: The design is significantly advanced from the original sketches and is creative and original.
5. 10 points: Effort: Effort has been put into the assignment.

Guide to Persuasive Affordances

Persuasive Affordance	Definition	Example
Reduce barriers (time, effort, cost)	Make it easy for people to do what you want them to do	One-click shopping on Amazon makes it effortless to buy something.
Increase self-efficacy	Help people to feel more effective in reaching the goals you want to support, for example by providing them with feedback that shows some success at achieving the goal.	A calorie tracker can give people a sense that they are actually doing something when they diet and exercise
Provide information for better decision-making	Give people information that will lead them to make the decision you feel is better for them (without misleading).	Carbon footprint calculators can show people  the effect of their activities is.
Change mental models	Change how people think about a situation so that they will act differently.	People have different mental models of how thermostats work -- some think of turning up the temperature as increasing the flow of heat, while others think of it as changing the temperature at which the furnace switches on or off. The latter model tends to lead to  less energy use.  Thermostats could be designed to more clearly evoke a "switch" model to reduce energy usage.
Provide first-hand learning, insight, visualization, resolve	Give people a personal experience of the issue you care about so they will think about it differently	Provide people with pollution information tailored to their own city block to motivate them to take action
Promote understanding of cause-effect relationships	Represent the non-immediate consequences of people's actions	An electrical monitor that represents energy use by showing its effects on polar bears or sea level.
Motivate through experience, sensation	Give people bodily sensations (for example, through compelling visualizations) that change their behavior	Provide a virtual reality environment on an exercise bike that stimulates people to exercise harder.=
Establish social norms	Help people calibrate what behavior is reasonable or desirable by establishing a social standard	A water use meter that reports one's own usage compared to everyone else on the street.
Invoke social rules and dynamics	Use computers as social actors that follow social rules (e.g. if I do you a favor you should do me one)	Tell the user the app is proud of them when they do what you believe they should do.
Provide social support or sanction	Leverage people's desire to please and connect with their friends and/or to not be ashamed in front of them	Post writing goals on Facebook and update every day about whether one achieved them