Many researchers have investigated ways to use technology to convince people to adopt healthy or sustainable lifestyles. One of the most common approaches has been to use information and feedback to encourage behavioral change. By inducing users to set goals and providing them with feedback about their current behavior, this approach seeks to increase people’s awareness about an issue and to encourage them to change their behavior. [1]In this paper titled “Mining Behavioral Economics to Design Persuasive Technology for Healthy Choices” the authors make note of the increasing role of information technology in peoples’ daily lives, and that people already make decisions on many things (e.g., which route to take, which restaurant to go to, etc.) based on the information presented to them by their information technology device (smart phone). It has an optimistic tone, similar to that in Nedelchev's article (mentioned in my last post) in that it speaks towards a "better" tomorrow (healthy eating habits in this case) for an individual affected by their use of information technology. Clearly there are advantages to having access to the information that people are taking in. By accessing what information people are putting out, which is more and more doable in an information technology, Internet of Things-world their patterns can be perceived and so specific information can be implanted into those patterns in order to influence them. In the case of this paper, the authors are researching methods the get users to make decisions towards healthier eating habits.
Of the many ways technology can be used to convince people to behave a certain way, one of the methods mentioned in Lee et al. is the use of information and feedback: "By inducing users to set goals and providing them with feedback about their current behavior…" In terms of goals and feedback, this is much like the gamification of apps, where a user might be rewarded points for completing a health goal or posting something on Facebook that other users with like. A more widely-used, formal definition of gamification is “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts,” as stated by Deterding et al. in 2011. [4]
Lee et al., in their paper, go on to suggest an alternative approach to the feedback loop that is “drawn from the field of behavioral economics." Generally, they focus on promoting “healthy snacking in the workplace”, and it discusses “designs” that apply behavioral-economic persuasion techniques through persuasive technology to make it happen. The combination of these topics raises some interesting questions as to how “smart” technologies can influence people and how the bulk-collection of data plays into this. Could our own data, recorded and sold through and by social networks, service providers, and device manufacturers be used to influence our decisions when we refer to technology for assistance? Are the developers behind persuasive technologies collecting more information about the users than they [the users] are aware of?
Sources:
[1] Lee, Min Kyung, Sara Kiesler, and Jodi Forlizzi. "Mining behavioral economics to design persuasive technology for healthy choices." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2011.
[2] Schrepel, Thibault. "Behavioral Economics in U.S. (antitrust) Scholarly Papers." Web log post. Le Concurrentialiste. N.p., 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.
[3] Dey, Anind K. "Understanding and using context." Personal and ubiquitous computing 5.1 (2001): 4-7.
[4] Deterding, Sebastian, et al. "Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts." CHI'11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2011.
The article you used to further your research and chose to synthesize leaves me with high doubt and many question marks. I can see where perhaps if someone is really struggling with working towards a better quality of life, using apps or other forms of technology as a stepping stone may be the push they need- however, with all the studies being done on how technology is consuming our life and potentially lowering our quality of life, wouldn't the better option be to GET OUT and take action for yourself and not for a computerized reward? I'm old fashioned- I set goals for myself on paper, push myself for ME. I am also left wondering, so many people look to the internet or current articles about "what is healthy," but most of the articles out are fad diets, the nutrition world is constantly changing and it leaves me wondering how effective is it to use the internet as a trusting source as to how to eat? Take for example, the big Atkins diet that came and went several years ago, it was all the craze, and it turned out to be a big flop and those who couldn't stick to the diet typically ended up gaining more weight than their original weight before starting the diet. Although, like I mentioned earlier, I think it can definitely be a good stepping stone for tips and tricks in helping work towards a better quality of life, but I find it hard to believe anyone should sustain their health by using technology.
ReplyDeleteUck! Once upon a time behavioral techniques were not imposed to control, but offered, dare I say, with some pureness of heart, some genuine desire, in order to help, to heal another. Constant goal setting, data checking and feedback are robotic, twisting human interaction into covert control and trickery. The dull distant tinkerings of these machinations, this attack of maya, noises in the distance. When one man or woman is overpowered by this illusory energy it bodes no good. When an entire planet of subjects is lulled into submission and nonsense it is very serious,... and fatal.
ReplyDelete