Christel De Maeyer*, VUB - iMinds, Brussels, Belgium An Jacobs, VUB - iMinds, Brussels, Belgium Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Persuasive communication and technology Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

If you are the presenter of this abstract (or if you cite this abstract in a talk or on a poster), please show the QR code in your slide or poster (QR code contains this URL).

Background and Objectives:
We observe that more “smart devices” are becoming part of our daily life, and people that start to quantify aspects of their way of life are becoming more mainstream. People are leaving a big digital footprint in the virtual world with passive and active tracking.
From the motivations of people who quantify the self, e.g change to a healthier lifestyle, we learn that there are opportunities for realizing healthcare more oriented and organized around prevention. Not only on an individual level, but also on a population level patterns might be discovered in user data helping to support predictions in a more granular and personalized way. Besides the opportunities, these developments spur questions on how are people dealing with the data, trust and privacy. Are the devices as effective as we think? Are they able to create enough awareness and persuasion to change people’s life for the better or is this more a temporary phenomenon that makes people change their behavior for a short term during the tracking? Do they continue to lead the lifestyle they adapted during the tracking period?

Method:
In this paper we discuss these different aspects based on the explorative insights we collected by doing empirical research creating a social quasi-experimental set up for a mid long term period (project duration: sept 2012-sept 2013). We provided 10 persons who at the start of the project where not using any tracking devices, with a BodyMedia armband and the use of the Body Media Activity manager to monitor their progress and goals. The active research “testing period” took place during two periods of two months (fall – spring), giving us the opportunity to look into seasonal differences. The gap in the months in-between we use to evaluate if the participants spontaneously track themselves. Next, we also recruited from the start a “control”group of people with matching profiles (N=10) who do not have an armband. From this group we collect life style information by using the same tools (weekly survey and in depth interview) as with the 10 people wearing the armband (experimental group), evaluating in this way the effect of attention by the researcher/coach in making these lifestyle changes. In order to get a clear view on the behavior types we use Fogg’s Behavior Grid and Wizzard to map the profiles of the participants and their progress.

Results:
We expect that the use of this technology will create higher awareness of the life style and their personal distance to the goal they set themselves (weight, physical activity or keeping
up with the standards they have now), and because of that, will make changes in their behavior (persuasion via technology). We assume people will only active measure in the in-between period, if they developed a need during the previous phase to feed their identity by this kind of information (quantified self). We do expect seasonal effects, situational (e.g family, time) and interpretative differences, showing new aspects of the strength of persuasive technology.