Transformative Technology Conference

Welcome to join this community breakout session on Human Artificial Intelligence at the annual Transformative Technology Conference.

Tremendous achievements are demonstrating our humane ability to evolve and progress. On this journey, let's remember that all the key answers are already encoded in our basic nature. Thus, artificial intelligence is only something that can serve us for the next big leap of the mankind. Technology is nothing more than a huge mirror that reflects all the good and the bad sides of what we have inherited as human beings.

Artificial intelligence is learning from what we can offer.

Developer bias is at the core of all our expectations and speculations for the future of man-machine co-evolution.

TransTech Paris 2nd Event

Together with our community we explored and enjoyed the experience and expertise around transformative technology for wellbeing and design for a better future.

A network of TransTech experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, scholars, and enthusiasts. A community hosting events, empowering disruption, facilitating tech development, helping to find partnerships, funding, and purposeful evolution. Welcome to expand your knowledge, practice, and future vision on TransTech.

TransTech Global

Join the largest global community of entrepreneurs and innovators leveraging technology to expand human potential and flourishing - Transformative Technology Lab.

Transformative Technology Community Opening Event

We are proudly announcing the launch of TransTech Paris Chapter. A network of Transformative Technology experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, scholars, and enthusiasts.

A community hosting events, empowering disruption, facilitating tech development, helping to find partnerships, funding, and purposeful evolution. Welcome to expand your knowledge, practice, and future vision on Transformative Technology.

Join the largest global community of entrepreneurs and innovators leveraging technology to expand human potential and flourishing. Our mission is to permanently move a billion people into a state of wellbeing and flourishing by 2030.

Transformative Technology - Global Community

We sit at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, tech, entrepreneurship, and innovation. We leverage exponential technologies like AI, AR/VR/XR, networks and sensors, biotech, neurofeedback, robotics and more to build tech to enable human wellbeing at scale. We start with this premise – the Future of Work, Society, and Tech depends on the State of the Human Mind.

How do we enable every human to develop their full potential?

Together, we can create an unprecedented era of human flourishing. We can take the tech that has taxed our thinking and relationships and use it instead to transform our hearts and minds. We can have greater clarity, joy and connection, and ultimately more possibility for all of humanity.

We must have flourishing because we cannot solve our other problems without having healthy human minds. Psychological wellbeing was once considered a luxury – something you get at the end of a stressful and fear-filled life. But now we need flourishing – to work, to live, to thrive. This is why we need to build the tech that we really, actually, need. The tech that helps us know ourselves better than algorithms, that helps us connect to ourselves and one another. The tech that supports our hearts and minds. Remember: We can design tech to serve us, to prioritize human contact and connection.

At Action Spot in Silicon Valley

Transformation tools and design methodology for organizations and businesses to empower profitable changes during and post COVID-19. Explaining the typology of change, vectoral transformation, eight tools of the transformation design framework, and providing practical examples of applied behavior design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Media Lab). Achieving positive transformations in cities, organizations, and human lives.

Change has been always part of any evolution. In business management, just like everywhere else, continuous improvements have been assuring the success of every project. Moreover, also outside forces keep pushing for more rapid organizational change. Such conditions require businesses to master transformation, so that they become the drivers of change, instead of being desperate followers.

This event provides scientific knowledge and practical methodology for leaders designing transformation. It explains a typology of change, a concept of vectoral transformation, a transformation framework containing eight applicable tools, an application example, and three case studies deploying this methodology. It demonstrates how transformation, instead of being mystical and difficult, is actually practical and achievable. Professionals are encouraged deploying the provided transformation tools and design methodology.

Transforming Response to COVID-19

Discussing how data can help us understand and transform the response to COVID-19 by addressing these three main questions:

What data sources would you suggest can help us best understand the COVID-19 situation from a civic / municipal angle, and how?

You work with changing populations’ behaviours through feedback loops. What do you see as some easy wins we could be aiming for in this regard?

The question CoronaWhy SHOULD be asking — How to help people efficiently achieving their desired transformations?

CoronaWhy

CoronaWhy’s mission is to mobilize volunteers and community partners to address the world’s biggest challenges through data science, artificial intelligence and knowledge sharing. Our focus is the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

We are all in this together. For the sake of our high risk segments of the population every member of society, every business and every government must make an effort in solidarity to overcome this pandemic using all the tools available with the collective creative problem solving capability of human society worldwide.

UX Psychology Global Community Meetup

While digital transformation is effectively helping to advance physical and virtual environments, we tend to overlook the essential role that human nature is playing in the change processes. Therefore, this online masterclass will show you how business acceleration and societal wellbeing can be achieved through technology design and behavioural psychology.

Masterclass

Join UX Psychology Global Community for this online international masterclass where you’ll have the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals around the world in the human behaviour, design, and digital space. After this practical masterclass, you won’t see online transformation as mystical, but rather a practical process.

Community

UX Psychology exists to help people build digital experiences that make a difference in the world. If you know someone else who might be interested please share this event. Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you.

Wisdom Health: Emerging Community for Conscious Leaders

Human flourishing and societal wellbeing can be achieved through purposefully designed innovations that successfully blend technological advancements with behavioral science.

In the moments of global transformations, how to use technology in a humane way?

Wisdom Health is an emerging community for conscious leaders committed with cohesion and transformation in vulnerable times.

Keynote at World Happiness Fest

Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about human flourishing?

Future cities will reshape human potential in countless ways. Novel strategies and models are required for future urban spaces to properly respond to human evolution, environmental conditions, and social dynamics.

Transforming technologies will play an important role in making cities more livable by addressing current emotional challenges and empowering mental health.

Transforming cities aim at improving wellbeing across societies through purposefully designed urban innovations that successfully blend technological advancements with human nature.

To achieve that, a science-driven Transforming Framework has been developed at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Media Lab) to equip practitioners and designers of technology to create urban innovations that last.

by Alumnus Prof. Agnis Stibe

Global thought leader on science-driven transformation. This Transformation Masterclass has travelled 5 continents engaging already thousands of people. Participants did:

• demystify transformation,

• acquire fundamentals of transformation,

• learn 8 transforming tools and

• apply them to real-life challenges.

Emergence of Transforming Wellbeing Theory (TWT) Tutorial

Majority of global problems and business challenges are byproducts of poor human attitude and behavior. Communities, societies, businesses, and organizations, basically everyone needs help with transformations. People often tend to perceive changes as something difficult, impossible, and mystical, thus are willing to avoid them. That attitude naturally leads to poorer decisions and consequent behavioral outcomes. This science-driven tutorial demystifies transformation by introducing:

• Transforming Wellbeing Theory (TWT) — that explains the essentials of and inevitable necessity for transformation,

• Typology of Change — that clarifies the variety of different changes, and

• Transforming Framework — that provides 8 (eight) applicable tools for bending technological innovations with human nature to empower sustainable changes at scale.

Due to its scientific richness and practical nature, this transforming tutorial is applicable in many essential contexts, including wellbeing, health, innovation, leadership, autonomy, commercialization, education, diversity, culture, sustainability, dwelling, equality, social change, governance, automation, emergency, management, marketing, art, safety, ecology, and economy.

Transforming Wellbeing Theory

Transforming Wellbeing Theory is emerging as an inevitable response to the ever-growing imbalance in our lives across the globe [15]. Over the decades, we have been advancing technologies to make our lives better and businesses growing. The fundamental question still remains: with all the evolving technologies, are we gaining decent success in achieving healthier societies and well performing organizations? Every crucial domain of our lives continuously provides evidence of how things are getting imbalanced despite us making huge progress in building increasingly capable innovations. This work summarizes the state-of-the-art scientific insights and practical applications to transform lives and accelerate businesses at global scale.

Present knowledge on persuasive technology often reveals how behavior change designs and interventions are limited in sustaining their effects [5-6]. There is an increasing need for novel ways to design technology that helps people not only to achieve their goals, but also to support sustaining their newly developed habits. Transforming innovations should ultimately empower people and organizations to succeed in their desired and more often even inevitable changes. Thus, the theory aims at extending the understanding beyond limitations of traditional change management and behavioral designs.

The theory is highly instrumental for organizations and communities that are designing for and undergoing transformations, as it provides and helps internalizing easy to use methods and tools for achieving permanent behavior change. This science-driven work embodies advanced knowledge on how to design sustainable changes, including Typology of Change and Transforming Framework.

Typology of Change

Scientific literature [1] [3-4] [16] reveals three general types of change: transactional, transitional, and transformational (Fig. 1). Transactional change is usually defined as an occurrence producing an outcome that differs from previous preferences. Then, transitional change is often defined as a period, in which certain outcomes significantly differ from what was habitual before. However, transformational change manifests itself as a continuum having direction as well as magnitude to produce apparently irreversible shifts.

The three types of change have their characteristics, including general descriptions, overall perspective, perceived timelines, orientations, nature, metrics, underlying psychology, and some examples provided in Table 1.

Transforming Framework

Despite acknowledgeable progress in designing persuasive technologies, many behavioral design interventions still produce unsustainable effects on target audiences [8]. To help scientists and practitioners creating technology designs for sustainable change [7] and wellbeing [10], a science-driven Transforming Framework is introduced (Fig. 2).

Transforming Framework embodies 8 (eight) scientifically driven tools that leverage prior knowledge on triadic reciprocal determinism (TRIANGLE) [2], elaboration and behavioral modeling (CURVE) [6] [9], essential components for defining transformation (METRIC) [14], susceptibility to influence and change (CIRCLES) [14], key layers of transforming technology design (ARCHITECTURE) [14], fundamentals of socially influencing systems (SOCIUM) [11], typology of computer-supported influence (MODERATION) [12], and dark patterns and persuasive backfiring (ETHICS) [13].

Event

This is the fourth sequential event succeeding the “Persuasive Urban Mobility” workshop in 2015, the “Empowering Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing” workshop in 2016, and the “Transforming Sociotech Design” tutorial in 2018. The number of participants has significantly grown over these events, which evidences their importance and relevance to the Persuasive Technology community, especially the conference participants. This upgraded tutorial will introduce and explain how the

Transforming Wellbeing Theory (TWT) contributes to the Persuasive Technology (PT) research by extending our understanding beyond limitations of traditional behavioral change designs and interventions.

This tutorial addresses highly important research direction that influences the future of PT and ways to properly and ethically design our ever-increasing technology-supported environments. The PT community will benefit from the advanced knowledge and immediate capacity of applying the fundamental strategies and frameworks to transform lives.

Organizers

• Prof. Agnis Stibe, ESLSCA Business School Paris, France

• Kathrin Röderer, Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria

• Michaela Reisinger, Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria

• Tobias Nyström, Uppsala University, Sweden

Transforming Sociotech Design tutorial 2018

References

1. Amado, G., Ambrose, A.: The Transitional Approach to Change. Karnac Books (2001)

2. Bandura, A.: Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1986)

3. de Biasi, K.: The Interdependent Relation between Continuity and Change. In Solving the Change Paradox by Means of Trust, pp. 45-75. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden (2019)

4. Burke, W. W., Litwin, G. H.: A Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change. Journal of Management, 18(3), pp. 523-545 (1992)

5. Chatterjee, S., Price, A.: Healthy Living with Persuasive Technologies: Framework, Issues, and Challenges. American Medical Informatics Association Journal 16, 171–178 (2009)

6. Fogg, B.J.: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (2003)

7. Mustaquim, M. M., Nyström, T.: A System Development Life Cycle for Persuasive Design for Sustainability. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 217–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

8. Orji, R., Moffatt, K.: Persuasive Technology for Health and Wellness: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Trends. Health Informatics Journal (2016)

9. Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T.: The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion. In Communication and Persuasion, pp. 1-24. Springer, New York, NY (1986)

10. Röderer, K., Reisinger, M. R., Stibe, A.: Well-Being in Persuasive Technology Research: A Systematic Review (forthcoming)

11. Stibe, A.: Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 171–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

12. Stibe, A.: Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 251–262. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

13. Stibe, A., Cugelman, B.: Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In International Conference on Persuasive Technology, pp. 65-77. Springer (2016)

14. Stibe, A., Larson, K.: Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities. In International Conference on Mobile Web and Information Systems (MobiWIS), pp. 271-282. Springer International Publishing (2016)

15. Stibe, A.: Envisioning the Theory of Transforming Wellbeing: Influencing Technology and Sociotech Design. The 7th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO). IEEE Conferences. Page 6. Keynote. June 10-14, 2018, Budva, Montenegro (2018)

16. Vito, G. F., Higgins, G. E., Denney, A. S.: Transactional and Transformational Leadership: An Examination of the Leadership Challenge Model. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 37(4), pp. 809-822 (2014)

Welcome to the 'Uncovering Dark Patterns in Persuasive Technology' (#DPPT2018) Workshop

The dark patterns are interactive design patterns that influence technology users through deception or trickery, and which represent unethical applications of persuasive technology. However, our ability to identify dark patterns is limited, creating a situation where it is difficult to manage abuses of persuasive psychology, because it is difficult to even identify them. Although there are numerous practitioner taxonomies of dark patterns, there is no scientifically-based taxonomy available.

In this workshop, participants enjoyed an introduction to dark patterns, and an overview of the psychological mechanisms that drive them.

Through participatory exercises, participants helped to identify the theoretical-underpinnings that drive dark patterns, and contribute to the development of a taxonomy of dark patterns, based on consensus within the scientific community. In the workshop, we formed working teams who reviewed the dark pattern taxonomy, looking for alternative theoretical explanations. Each working team participated in a group sorting exercise, designed to inform the development of a theoretically-framed taxonomy of dark patterns. All outputs of the workshop were captured, and used to advance this study towards validation of the taxonomy. After the workshops, the authors of this paper plan to incorporate all the advancements into the next stage of the research, which will feed into a subsequent paper on a taxonomy of dark patterns, addressing the identified research questions.

Agenda

13:30 Introduction (20 min)
13:50 Presentations (40 min)

14:30 Break (15 min)

14:45 Card Sorting (45 min)
15:30 Live Analysis of Card Sort (15 min)

15:45 Break (15 min)

16:00 Unifying Dark Patterns Taxonomy (30 min)
16:30 Presenting Unified Theory (20 min)
16:50 Award Ceremony (5 min)
16:55 Next Steps (5 min)

Organizers

Look forward to see you all on April 17, 2018, in Waterloo, ON, Canada:

• Prof. Agnis Stibe, Paris ESLSCA Business School, France

• Dr. Brian Cugelman, AlterSpark, Toronto, ON, Canada

• Dr. Kate Pangbourne, University of Leeds, UK

• Dr. Simon Wells, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

• Anne-Kathrine Kjær Christensen, Specifii, Copenhagen, Denmark

Background

Dark patterns are interactive design patterns that influence technology users through deception, trickery or hostility, that make their lives difficult or contribute a negative impact, through intended or unintended design practices that represent unethical applications of persuasive technology [2]. Examples of dark patterns include getting people to purchase unnecessary insurance, signing up for products without knowing they are on recurring billing, exposing users to content that makes them feel bad about themselves in order to influence their behavior, environmental designs that are effectively ‘hostile’ to particular groups such as the homeless, cyclists or pedestrians. 

Industry professionals have raised public awareness of dark patterns, and have taken steps to identify, collect, and describe dark patterns. Their efforts have helped draw attention to dark patterns [6]. However, there is no comprehensive practitioner taxonomy, they tend to lack a strong theoretical basis, and the taxonomies put forward draw on colloquial terms, rather than frameworks typically employed by the behavioral sciences.

Importance

There is a practical need to develop a science-based taxonomy of dark patterns that makes stronger links to behavioral science principles [4]. The existing taxonomies [3] can be greatly improved, through taking a more systematic approach that better identifies the theoretical underpinnings. We extend our definition of persuasive technology beyond the digital to illustrate a long history of darkness in persuasion, our idea is that our taxonomy should be holistic and applicable to different persuasive contexts. As the Internet of Things reaches further into our lives by digitally connecting physical objects and infrastructures, the persuasive effects of smart cities, smart transport and smart homes are likely to be profound.

For this reason, we have been carrying out a systematic review of information about programs, apps, behavioral and environmental designs that may contain dark patterns. This study is aimed at improving our understanding of persuasive technology by better describing what dark patterns are, identifying their theoretical underpinnings, and developing precise definitions that will both describe how to identify them, and how to describe when they are being applied [5]. We are also considering the ethical status of dark patterns in persuasive technology [1].

Goals and Research Direction

This workshop will support two goals. First, it provides an opportunity for participants to share knowledge regarding dark patterns, expressed appropriately, for example using visual depictions where necessary, and to discuss the psychological principles that explain their persuasiveness. Second, it will use participatory method, not just to engage participants, but also, to advance this project's goals of developing a taxonomy of dark patterns, that is more rooted in the behavioral science, by making stronger links between theory and practice. Participants will also be equipped to consider whether the use of dark patterns is ever ethically acceptable.

For the workshop, we have prepared a list of research questions to be discussed and further investigated:

• What taxonomy of dark patterns aligns with the behavioral sciences?

• What are the psychological mechanism driving dark patterns?

• How do dark patterns differ from anti-patterns (backfires, misfires, outcomes of poor design)?

• Why do people believe a design pattern constitutes a dark pattern?

• How to define the boundaries from persuasive to manipulative to coercive?

• Are there shades of darkness, from grey to black? How do we detect instances of dark patterns?

• When does a dark pattern and a psychological backfire overlap?

• What are the emotional impacts of dark patterns?

Examples

We have gathered real-life examples from persuasive and environmental technology that we or our informants regard as dark. Arguably, whilst users still have choices, by linking these examples to behavioral theory we intend to show that unconscious processes are triggered first and more strongly than the conscious processes required to make informed choices. The balance of knowledge is asymmetric in favor of giving the provider more power.

Structure and Outcomes

The workshop will start with an introduction followed by presentations on cognate topics, designed to provide background for the interactive exercise, overall:

• Ethics of persuasive technology,

• Resistance against manipulative behavior (trust in source, oxytocin and emotion),

• Grey areas in our understanding of dark patterns.

• Taxonomy of dark patterns (overview sheet and cards),

• Interactive classification exercise (like delphi or Q-method),

• Review of the data, discuss, and clean up the taxonomy based on group consensus.

Prior to the workshop, our team will have completed a systematic review of dark patterns, collecting examples in narrative and visual format, drawing on academic and practitioner sources. These will be aggregated into a list, that includes both simple examples with clear links to persuasion theory, and those that are more complex and not as easy to identify. Using expert review and consensus building, our team will develop the first taxonomy, that links dark patterns to principles routinely used in behavioral science, based on a grounded theory methodology, finalized through an expert review and consensual agreement. The final output will be a list of dark patterns, linked to theory and with an example of each pattern. These will be printed onto cards, so that each table in the workshop will have a list of dark patterns.

In the workshops, we will form working teams who will review the dark pattern taxonomy, looking for alternative theoretical explanations. Each working team will participate in a group sorting exercise, designed to inform the development of a theoretically-framed taxonomy of dark patterns. All outputs of the workshop will be captured, and used to advance this study towards validation of the taxonomy. After the workshops, the authors of this paper will incorporate all the advancements into the next stage of the research, which will feed into a subsequent paper on a taxonomy of dark patterns, addressing the identified research questions.

References

1. Berdichevsky, D., Neuenschwander, E.: Toward an Ethics of Persuasive Technology, Communications of the ACM, 42 (5), 51-58 (1999).

2. Fogg, B.J.: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (2003).

3. Spahn, A.: And Lead Us (not) into Persuasion…? Persuasive Technology and the Ethics of Communication. Science and Engineering Ethics, 18(4), 633-650 (2012).

4. Stibe, A. and Cugelman, B.: Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In International Conference on Persuasive Technology, pp. 65-77. Springer (2016).

5. Verbeek, P.P.: Persuasive Technology and Moral Responsibility Toward an Ethical Framework for Persuasive Technologies. Persuasive, 6, 1-15 (2006).

6. Zagal, J. P., Björk, S., Lewis, C.: Dark Patterns in the Design of Games. In Foundations of Digital Games (2013)

Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD) Tutorial

Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD) tutorial covers conceptual frameworks for designing and evaluating Persuasive Technology (PT) aimed at achieving sustainable transformations of our lives towards wellbeing. The tutorial introduces and explains how TSD contributes to PT research by extending our understanding beyond limitations of traditional behavioral change designs and interventions.

Template

TSD embodies a fundamental understanding of the PT components that are essential for designing successful transformations, known as: 

• Socially Influencing Systems

• Computer-Supported Influence

• Persuasive Cities

• Persuasive Backfiring

• Persuasive Design for Sustainability

This knowledge of TSD empowers the scholars and designers participating in this tutorial session to create PT that makes behavioral and attitudinal changes last. Moreover, the tutorial also shares the knowledge about strategies from rhetoric, psychology, and neuroscience that lead to attitudinal transformations. By definition, this tutorial also transforms the way participants see the potential of PT in attaining long-term permanent behavioral changes at all scales, be it at individual, group, or societal levels.

Everyone interested in creating innovations that successfully transform human behavior and attitude is welcome, especially PT researchers and practitioners, including designers, developers, user experience experts, psychologists, gamifyers, and nudging enthusiasts.

Agenda

9:00 Introduction
9:15 Defining Transformation
9:30 Transforming Sociotech Design

10:00 Break

10:15 Transforming Model
10:35  Socially Influencing Systems
10:55 Computer-Supported Influence

11:15 Break

11:30 Persuasive Cities
11:45 Persuasive Backfiring & Dark Patterns
12:00 Persuasive Design for Sustainability
12:15 Next Steps

Organizers

• Prof. Agnis Stibe, ESLSCA Business School Paris, France

• Anne-Kathrine Kjær Christensen, Specifii, Copenhagen, Denmark

• Tobias Nyström, Uppsala University, Sweden

Motivation

Present knowledge on Persuasive Technology (PT) often reveals how behavior change designs and interventions are limited in sustaining their effects [6]. There is an increasing need for novel ways to create PT that helps people not only to achieve their goals, but also supports everyone to maintain their new habits. Such PT should ultimately empower people to succeed in their desired transformations. Therefore, this tutorial will cover conceptual frameworks for designing and evaluating PT aimed at achieving sustainable transformations of our lives towards wellbeing. The tutorial will introduce and explain how Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD) contributes to the existing PT knowledge by extending our understanding beyond limitations of traditional behavioral change designs and interventions.

Frameworks

This tutorial is highly instrumental for researchers and practitioners designing PT, as it will provide and help internalize scientific frameworks for achieving permanent behavior change. TSD embodies fundamental understanding of the PT components that are essential for designing successful transformations, known as Socially Influencing Systems [11], Computer-Supported Influence [10], Persuasive Cities [13], Persuasive Backfiring [12], and Persuasive Design for Sustainability [8].

Socially Influencing Systems

The framework of Socially Influencing Systems [11] describes perpetual mechanisms to foster user motivation as compared to conventional methods, such as those that are based incentives and punishments. Socially Influencing Systems harness social influence from crowd behavior to craft influential messaging aimed at shifting behavior and attitude of an individual, who naturally is an integral part of the same crowd. Such continuous interplay can ultimately result in an ongoing process that has the capacity to transform lives without any other mechanisms.

Computer-Supported Influence

The framework of Computer-Supported Influence [10] in the realm of PT distinguishes four types of persuasion, i.e. interpersonal persuasion, computer-mediated persuasion, computer-moderated persuasion, and human-computer persuasion. This framework outlines a sharper conceptual representation of the key terms in transforming design, drafts a structured approach for better understanding of the influence typology, and presents how computers can be moderators of social influence.

Persuasive Cities

The framework of Persuasive Cities [13] aims at improving wellbeing across societies through applications of socio-psychological theories and their integration with conceptually new urban designs. This research presents an ecosystem of future cities, describes three generic groups of people depending on their susceptibility to persuasive technology, explains the process of defining behavior change, and provides tools for social engineering of Persuasive Cities.

Persuasive Backfiring

The framework of Persuasive Backfiring [12] provides tools to aid academics and designers in the study of behavior change interventions that produce unintended negative outcomes, presents a taxonomy of backfiring causes, and describes an analytical approach containing the intention-outcome and likelihood-severity matrices. This framework also introduces and locates dark patterns within the PT research.

Persuasive Design for Sustainability

The framework on Persuasive Design for Sustainability [8] originates from two previously established frameworks of a cognitive dissonance model for persuasive design for sustainability and a system development lifecycle (SDLC) process in design for sustainability. The established SDLC of Persuasive Design for Sustainability introduces a novel methodology for designing solutions that confront the problems of developing a persuasive system that transforms behaviors towards a set goal like sustainability.

Impact

This tutorial will address highly important research direction that influences the future of PT and our ever-increasing technology-supported environments [13]. According to social sciences [1], environmental, personal, and behavioral factors are locked into triadic reciprocal determinism, meaning that all three are strongly interconnected and continuously reshaping each other. Thus, environmental design is a strong influencer on human behavior and attitude. In other words, quite often it is merely sufficient to improve our digitally-equipped spaces to achieve better lives [10]. This is a very powerful vision as it encompasses not only behavior change but also a potential transformation of human behavior at scale [13]. This collection of knowledge on TSD will empower the scholars and designers participating in this tutorial session to create PT that makes behavioral and attitudinal changes last. Moreover, the tutorial will share also knowledge about strategies from rhetoric [4], psychology [1, 5], neuroscience [2, 5], and social influence [11] that can lead to attitudinal transformation. By definition, this tutorial will also transform the way participants see the potential of PT in attaining long-term permanent behavioral changes at all scales, be it at individual, group, or societal levels.

Outcomes

The tutorial will provide participants with frameworks and models that has been proven to be effective in helping to achieve permanent behavior changes and attitudinal transformations. Knowledge about strategies from rhetoric [4], psychology [1, 5], neuroscience [2, 5], and social influence [11] will be put on the table for everyone to learn, experience, design, and apply. The strategies will be applied hands on to learn how to make a difference and achieve transformations using real-life issues. Participants will expand their horizons of how the various frameworks connect, sometimes overlap, complement each other, and can be effectively combined to solve some of the most essential behavioral challenges we have today.

The main outcome of this tutorial for our persuasive technology community members will be their more advanced knowledge about and immediate capacity of applying the fundamental strategies and frameworks for transforming lives. Outcomes of this tutorial are instrumental for various contexts, including health [3], eHealth [14], education, games [7], sustainability [8], safety, wellbeing [9], emergency management, ecology, and economy. Ultimately, more refined scientific knowledge on how to design permanent behavior changes will be generated and translated into applicable guidelines for our PT community to foster transformation for the betterment of our future.

Information technology and computer systems will be increasingly designed to change behavior and help achieve better lives [2-6]. TSD overviews and explains how various frameworks and models can help scholars and developers to create PT that facilitates desired transformative effects on users. Persuasive technologies [6] will reshape human behavior in countless ways and some will continue to misuse strategies and fail their responsibility towards the betterment of human lives. Thus, more effort has to be put into educating and training [7] researchers and designers not only with insights on how to change behavior, but also include the responsibility and ethical mindsets that should be followed.

Organizers

• Prof. Agnis Stibe from the world-renowned MIT Media Lab will bring very fresh and novel way how to design transformation. He established research on future Persuasive Cities that encourage healthy and sustainable routines. Prof. Stibe believes that our world can become a better place thought purposefully designed urban spaces that successfully blend technological advancements with human nature. His research is built upon socio-psychological theories to design long-lasting transformations of our lives. Agnis is an active member of PT community, frequently speaking at annual conferences and effectively collaborating with industry. He has worked for a number of Fortune 100 companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. He has received awards from the MIT Media Lab, Nokia Foundation, and more.

• Anne-Kathrine Kjær Christensen has studied persuasive design at Aalborg University (cum laude) and was part of the Persuasive Technology community e.g. participating with a presentation at Persuasive 2007 at Stanford University regarding an article she wrote with Prof. Per Hasle. Since graduation in 2008 she has worked for both public and private companies. She has been the owner of her own company Specifii for about 3 years. She has worked as product owner for Telenor on a large omnichannel project and as product owner for the shipping company DFDS. She has also worked with customer insight + customer experience for several companies e.g. Dating.dk. Anne frequently speaks about Persuasive Technology at different meetups and conferences in Denmark.

• Tobias Nyström is a researcher and PhD candidate with expertise in business studies and information systems. Tobias recent research has focused on sustainability combined with universal design, gamification, open innovation, system design, and persuasive technology. One of his papers, co-written with Moyen Mustaquim, was accepted to and presented at the PT conference in Chicago, IL, USA, April 2015.

Supportive Materials

References

1. Bandura, A.: Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1986)

2. Cacioppo, J.T., Cacioppo, S., Petty, R.E.: The Neuroscience of Persuasion: A Review with an Emphasis on Issues and Opportunities. Social Neuroscience, 1-44 (2017)

3. Chatterjee, S., Price, A.: Healthy Living with Persuasive Technologies: Framework, Issues, and Challenges. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) 16, 171–178 (2009)

4. Christensen, A.K.K., Hasle, P F.: Classical Rhetoric and a Limit to Persuasion. In: de Kort Y., IJsselsteijn W., Midden C., Eggen B., Fogg B.J. (eds) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 4744, pp. 307-310. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2007)

5. Cugelman, B.: Digital Behavior Change Toolkit (iteration #), AlterSpark Corp. Toronto, Canada. www.alterspark.com (2015)

6. Fogg, B.J.: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (2003)

7. Fountoukidou, S., Ham, J., Midden, C., Matzat, U.: Using Tailoring to Increase the Effectiveness of a Persuasive Game-Based Training for Novel Technologies. Int. Work. Pers. Persuas. Technol. (2017)

8. Mustaquim, M. M., Nyström, T.: A System Development Life Cycle for Persuasive Design for Sustainability. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 217–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

9. Orji, R. and Moffatt, K.: Persuasive Technology for Health and Wellness: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Trends. Health Informatics Journal (2016)

10. Stibe, A.: Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 251–262. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

11. Stibe, A.: Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology, LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 171–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

12. Stibe, A. and Cugelman, B.: Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In International Conference on Persuasive Technology, pp. 65-77. Springer (2016)

13. Stibe, A. and Larson, K.: Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities. In International Conference on Mobile Web and Information Systems (MobiWIS), pp. 271-282. Springer International Publishing (2016)

14. Van Velsen, L., Wentzel, J., Van Gemert-Pijnen, J. E.: Designing eHealth that Matters via a Multidisciplinary Requirements Development Approach. JMIR research protocols, 2(1), (2013)

Merged with the Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD) Tutorial

About

This workshop will discuss the research efforts that are being made aimed at changing human behavior and attitude. It will engage the persuasive technology community to jointly look at where do we stand and where do we want to go with the field. In 2018, it will be fifteen years since the seminal book on persuasive technology was published. Since then, already twelve annual conferences have been held on the topic. The Persuasive Technology community has attracted many young scholars and has kept very strong core of leading scientists in the area of research. At the same time, not all expectations have been met over the last decade. Therefore, the community needs to come together and discuss ways for natural expansion and strategic growth. We need acknowledge weaknesses in the area of behavior change interventions and seek for ways to overcome them.

This workshop will help facilitating discourses around human behavior, behavior change, early interventions for behavior change, persuasive technology, persuasive systems design, design with intent, personalized persuasion, behavior change support systems, health behavior change, socially influencing systems, user experience design for behavior change, computer-supported influence, and more. The workshop will discuss open questions, promote a healthy debate amongst academics, create strategic directions, and unify everyone around what’s essential for advancing the community in a fundamentally fresh and novel way.

Register

To register your participation, please visit the Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD) tutorial page.

Organizers

Look forward to see you all on April 17, 2018, in Waterloo, ON, Canada:

• Sitwat Usman Langrial, Sur University College, Oman

• Peter de Vries, University of Twente, The Netherlands

• Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen, Aalborg University, Denmark

• Prof. Agnis Stibe, Paris ESLSCA Business School, France

Opening

People have unique beliefs and values that shape up their personalities over time. However, not many act in accordance with their beliefs and values. It is not surprising to find a contradiction between peoples’ beliefs and actual actions. Such inconsistencies gave birth to the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance [1]. Indeed, it was this particular gap in peoples’ beliefs and actual actions that was recognized by academics, psychologists and researchers leading to the manifest role of Persuasive Technology to shape up human behavior.

Advancing

While several scholars studied human behavior and early interventions were designed to guide users through behavior change process [2,3], Brendryen and Kraft proposed that technology-based interventions had the potential to change people’s behaviors [4]. In 2003, Fogg introduced a new research area known as Persuasive Technology [5]. His work originates from Human Psychology and hence it is essential to understand the interplay between Psychology and Technology when interventions are developed to shape up human behavior. The research field of Persuasive Technology highlights the potential of technology as a tool for persuasion where the earlier acts both as a medium and a social actor [5]. Following Fogg’s work, researchers from around the globe started developing and analyzing persuasive technologies for a wide range of areas including but not limited to promotion of physical activity [6], saving energy [7], living happily [8], reducing soda consumption [9], managing mental disorders [10] and persuasive cities [11].

Learning from Success!

Available research largely provides evidence of learning from success. In other words, it is relatively hard to find scientific publications in the area of Persuasive Technology that highlight failures. This compels us to think whether we as researchers can learn from success only? Or is it so that our research settings are flawless that our research outcomes are always positive? It remains a fact that real knowledge is verified knowledge in a way that the knowledge base should be proven by intelligence or by (logical) evidence. Further, scholarly integrity in any research discipline demands that researchers should abstain from any unverified remarks [12]. In other words, we must disown biased and speculative results. We propose that the same should be practiced in the research field of Persuasive Technology. Persuasive Technology has received a great deal of attention from researchers who have developed stand-alone applications to promote desirable behaviors. However, a quick look at the previous proceedings indicates that researchers are still focused on application-driven studies with little attention to theoretical grounds. Hence there is a lack of balance between studying technologies and theories to support the work.

Bias?

Another area that calls for discussion is an evident lack of publications that has highlight failures. This is in line with a review of empirical studies by [13] who investigated a variety of persuasive information systems and reported that reviewed studies primarily reported fully positive and partially positive effects [13]. We argue that partial reason for absence of publications that report failures is because of publication bias that pertains to acceptance of only those manuscripts that have statistically significant level of results while all other submissions are more or less rejected. Similar reservations have also been put forward by [14].

This, in a way, is publication suppression that obstructs what could otherwise prove to be quality papers from being accepted. When it comes to Persuasive Technology this would result in serious inaccuracy rates in available literature. There is substantial evidence that convinces the existence of publication bias. Banks and colleagues propose that the degree of publication bias has grown to such an extent that available research results are unreliable of all research. Further, they highlight that publication bias is one of the greatest threats to the legitimacy of meta-analytic articles, which in turn are among the most significant instruments for advancing scientific research [14]. There could be several reasons for publication bias. One being authors’ decision. In simple terms, authors have more control of their data. A classic example would be a situation where authors would not submit their work because of small sample size, statistically insignificant results or because of findings that contradict previous research.

Heading Where?

The issue of publication bias applies to almost all the research disciplines and the research area of Persuasive Technology is no exception. Here, we would highlight another issue that is similar to publication bias. This critical issue is what we generally call as conflict of interest. If we go through the proceedings of all the conferences on Persuasive Technology, it becomes crystal clear that prominent names seem to appear both in the scientific committees as well as in the list of authors of accepted publications. This is a clear case of conflict of interest, one would argue. While there is no substitute for experience and we can never underestimate the contribution of senior researchers, yet it seems relatively clear that the research area of Persuasive Technology is in what might call as “rigid control” of a few. As an example, consider the International Conference on Persuasive Technology. One would notice that a high majority of Steering Committee remain the same and secondly, most of them have at least one paper published in the proceedings.

Outcomes

The proposed workshop aims to bring researchers together to a forum that facilitates constructive discussion and debate. The research area of Persuasive Technology is receiving increasing interest from across the globe and deservingly so. Yet it is observed that the audience at Persuasive Technology conferences revolves mainly around the same crowd with a few exceptions. It is anticipated that the workshop will provide an opportunity for researchers from different disciplines to address the issue and come up with constructive recommendations leading to a change for the advancement of Persuasive Technology Community.

We welcome topics included but not limited to:

• Theory-driven persuasive design

• Publishing failures

• Multidisciplinary contributions

• Publication bias

• Attracting larger audience

• Strategic steering

References

1. Festinger, L. A (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

2. Revere, D., & Dunbar, P. J. (2001). Review of Computer-generated Outpatient Health Behavior Interventions Clinical Encounters “in Absentia”. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 8(1), 62-79.

3. Reiter, E., Robertson, R., & Osman, L. M. (2003). Lessons from a failure: Generating tailored smoking cessation letters. Artificial Intelligence, 144(1), 41-58.

4. Brendryen, H., & Kraft, P. (2008). Happy Ending: A randomized controlled trial of a digital multi‐media smoking cessation intervention. Addiction, 103(3), 478-484.

5. Fogg, B. J. (2003). Computers as persuasive social actors.

6. Toscos, T., Faber, A., An, S., & Gandhi, M. P. (2006, April). Chick clique: persuasive technology to motivate teenage girls to exercise. In CHI'06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1873-1878). ACM.

7. Midden, C., & Ham, J. (2009, April). Using negative and positive social feedback from a robotic agent to save energy. In Proceedings of the 4th international conference on persuasive technology (p. 12). ACM.

8. Chatterjee, S., & Price, A. (2009). Healthy living with persuasive technologies: framework, issues, and challenges. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16(2), 171-178.

9. Langrial, S., & Oinas-Kukkonen, H. (2012). Less fizzy drinks: a multi-method study of persuasive reminders. In Persuasive Technology. Design for Health and Safety (pp. 256-261). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

10. Langrial, S., Oinas-Kukkonen, H., Lappalainen, P., & Lappalainen, R. (2014, May). Managing depression through a behavior change support system without face-to-face therapy. In International Conference on Persuasive Technology (pp. 155-166). Springer, Cham.

11. Stibe, A., & Larson, K. (2016). Persuasive cities for sustainable wellbeing: quantified communities. In International Conference on Mobile Web and Information Systems (pp. 271-282). Springer International Publishing.

12. Lakatos, I. (1976). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes (pp. 205-259). Springer Netherlands.

13. Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Pakkanen, T. (2014). Do Persuasive Technologies Persuade?-A Review of Empirical Studies. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 118-136).

14. Banks, G. C., Kepes, S., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012). Publication Bias: A call for improved meta‐analytic practice in the organizational sciences. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20(2), 182-196.

15. Available at: http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/why-science-needs-to-publish-negative-results/?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=All&utm_campaign=Why%20Science%20Needs%20to%20Publish%20Negative%20Results&sf8382783=1. Accessed on April 15, 2015.