Structured Controlled Reflexivity Prototyping as a Way to Improve the Design of Persuasive Technologies

Jaime Rivera

Institute of Design Illinois Institute of Technology

Chicago, IL 60654, USA jaime@id.iit.edu.

Tom MacTavish Institute of Design

Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL 60654, USA

tomm@id.iit.edu

ABSTRACT Current developments in medicine, from treatment to prevention, present new opportunities for Persuasive Technologies (PT) as it seeks to understand how interactive systems can support desired behavior change by assessing psychological, social and cognitive aspects. Since PT is an emergent multidisciplinary field, it is expected that there will be a knowledge gap between theory and practice. Therefore the formal discipline of design, as a discipline that has extended the boundaries of its associated domains of knowledge and practice to participate in solving complex technical, social and operational problems [1], can play a decisive role to reduce this knowledge gap by exploring structured methods and the use of prototypes in the early stages of a project that thus enable a better cultural and emotional understanding of people experiences. Author Keywords Behavior change, evaluation methods, prototyping, user studies, design. 1. BACKGROUND In the U.S. health system, we are in a moment of transition with the government encouraging the empowerment of its population and placing them in charge of their own health care and ultimate wellness [2]. This is shifting the scope of curing sick patients from inside clinical settings, to more non-clinical spaces such as the patients' homes and senior centers. In this new situation, patients, families and friends are exposed to new solutions where behavioral change plays a key role in a wide array of activities spanning preventive medicine, health care administration, and overall patient wellness. Under this new scenario, an interdisciplinary scope is needed; however there is an open debate in HCI community about how to bridge the gap between technology and behavioral sciences [3]. This debate has some specific arguments about how to measure technologies for behavior change. As an example, Predrag Klansja presents an approach beyond the traditional scope of finding problematic design elements and proposes the need to unveil users perceptions and patterns of system use, especially in the early stages of the project [4]. In the same way, Fhari Yetim takes a critical approach from the

modernist point of view in persuasive technologies and mentions the inclusion of attitudes and unintended consequences, beyond just behaviors, as a way to allow users to reflect on their situation and decide possible actions [5]. In the CHI 2013 community, Rosa Arriaga led discussions about the design and evaluation of interactive systems to improve health behavior change where they considered the tension between design driven approaches that are common in HCI, and theory-driven methods that are favored in healthcare research [6]. Likewise, Craig MacDonald presented an overview of the past, present and future of the discipline [7], describing five potential research directions that included: creating a more holistic vision of User Experience evaluation with hedonic and pragmatic feedback, and investigating informal approaches of evaluation that expand the rigid definition of design quality to a more flexible way that can reflect the “fuzziness” of real design problems. Likewise, as a new discipline, and as an interdisciplinary research field that integrates developments from psychological, social and cognitive research with computer science PT has similar challenges. This is noticeable in the early proceedings of the International Conference of Persuasive Technologies, where it is common to find research projects describing technological implementations but providing scant information about the translation from theory to initial design concepts. Fresh attempts to apply the Fogg Behavior Grid were proposed in recent years with the aim of helping to select design strategies for specific situations [8], and there are some attempts to categorize the different techniques for persuasive system design beyond the traditional primary task support systems [9]. Researchers such as Sunny Consolvo are exploring how the technical support for behavior change impacts the individual’s social world. For this purpose she explores common theories in the field as Goal-setting theory (GST) and Cognitive Dissonance Theory in contrast with less prevalent theories like Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [10]. In the same way, Professor Shyam Sundar from Pennsylvania State University is working in new frameworks about how to connect the theories from SDT in applications that can

Paper  presented  in  the  9th  International  Conference  on  Persuasive  Technology,  PERSUASIVE  2014.  Padova,  Italy,  May  2014,  Adjunct  Proceedings.    ISBN  978  88  6787  229  9  

improve health-related behaviors [2]. While PT is evolving quickly to solve some of the major surface problems, the high rate of change can mask problems between theory and practice that are emerging in the HCI community. The work of Professor Erick Roedl and Erik Stolterman [11] shows some major issues that practitioners are facing: “over-generalization of design situations, the lack of respect for the complexity of group decision making, the lack of consideration for the burden of limited time and resources, and the prioritization of design exploration (divergence) rather than synthesis (convergence)”. Some academics propose to treat interaction not as a form of information processing but as a form of meaning making in which the artifact and its context at all levels are mutually defining and subject to multiple interpretations by the embodied actor [12]. Under this change, the role of Design, that traditionally is associated at the end of the process as a way to provide affordances for the users, could be reframed more broadly as part of the entire project and with a participative role of humanizing the technology with a multiple set of theoretical methods and tools. In a well-cited paper in the design community “When second wave meets third wave challenges” [13], Bødker presents a future scenario of technology, moving from the traditional work-task analysis of work related issues to multiple possibilities in our homes and everyday lives (a most appropriate instance for the study of behaviors related to health and wellness). In this sense, the methods of validation such as situated action, distributed cognition and activity theory are still valid and evolving to solve some of the context issues that are important topics of inquiry. However new explorations are emerging to understand more deeply the levels of emotion, culture and experience. She proposes some changes for the communities that are interested in this third wave, which advocates changing prototyping beyond the operationalization of interaction and further exploring a controlled process of reflexivity that includes studies of tailored and integrated situations from multiple areas of life. In this sense, other authors are exploring frameworks and strategies for this change. In the article “a practical framework for supporting third wave Interaction,” Odom states that meaning emerges in the dynamic interplay between reflection and concrete interaction that could be mediate by artifacts [14]. Under this alternative, the use of prototypes as a way to study a controlled reflexivity process by the user is possible and encouraged. However, a new concept of prototyping should be mentioned, while traditional prototypes are created to validate a concept at the final stages of a project, new approaches to prototyping suggest that provocative

prototypes (termed, "provotypes") can be used at the beginning of design research as a method of provocation, to understand interactions, constraints, and activities as described by the user. Provotypes combine the power of traditional prototyping [15] with participatory design methodology [16]. This method is appropriate to unveil assumptions taken for granted at the beginning of the project. 2. RESEARCH PLAN We propose building on the concept of provotypes in the next phase of our research by examining pre-established elements that can facilitate a structured approach. In this sense, the work of Youn-kyung Lim entitled “Interaction Gestalt and the Design of Aesthetic Interactions” [17] presents a set of attributes based in three key elements of interaction: Information, time and space. In the same way, Sundar's effort to combine Self Determination Theory with three types of affordances: navigability, interactivity and customization [2] may be informative and useful. As a method for this research, a grounded theory approach is preferable using information gained from participatory prototypes as a way to unveil cultural, emotional and experience variables. We plan to get information from the prototyping process by including mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative data. The proposal includes three different iterations that are going to be conducted in the next two years of my doctoral studies under the advice and supervision of Tom MacTavish, Assistant Professor at the IIT Institute of Design. 3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS How can we structure the process of making provocative prototypes <provotypes> to improve the design of Persuasive Technologies? How can we apply interaction attributes as information, space and time in a participatory process of prototyping (Provotyping) in the early stages of the project to unveil hidden assumptions from the stakeholders and facilitate the selection of the appropriate target behavior to change? How can we apply interaction attributes as information, space and time to facilitate the process of analysis and synthesis in the design of Persuasive Technologies? 4. ADVANCEMENT STATE Some of the previous efforts related to this research include the use of provotypes to understand peoples’ behavior in public locations. For example, “Skywords an interactive installation for city engagement” [18] leveraged technology, interaction design and the universal appeal of play to give people the opportunity to participate in government. In the

Paper  presented  in  the  9th  International  Conference  on  Persuasive  Technology,  PERSUASIVE  2014.  Padova,  Italy,  May  2014,  Adjunct  Proceedings.    ISBN  978  88  6787  229  9  

same way, the project “Visual Workflows for Design Project Knowledge Management“ proposed the use of an interactive surface as a digital learning knowledge management tool. The usability tests unveiled particular behaviors like the use of virtual space as a way to control the activity and the deliberate control of data as a way to impose a leadership. 5. REFERENCES

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[9] H. Oinas-kukkonen, “Behavior Change Support Systems  : The Next Frontier for Web Science,” in Web Science Conference 2010, Raleigh, NC, USA, 2010.

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[16] L. Boer and J. Donovan, “Provotypes for Participatory Innovation,” in Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 2012, pp. 388–397.

[17] Y. Lim, E. Stolterman, H. Jung, and J. Donaldson, “Interaction Gestalt and the Design of Aesthetic Interactions,” in Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 2007, no. August.

[18] L. Braun, J. Rivera, J. Mello, K. Hindi, L. Lin, K. Patel, and A. Mathew, “SkyWords: An Engagement Machine at Chicago City Hall,” in CHI ’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2013, pp. 2839–2840.

Paper  presented  in  the  9th  International  Conference  on  Persuasive  Technology,  PERSUASIVE  2014.  Padova,  Italy,  May  2014,  Adjunct  Proceedings.    ISBN  978  88  6787  229  9