Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS), comprise a collection of systems
constructs that are specifically designed to help and support behavior change in individuals
or groups. The highly multi-disciplinary nature of designing and implementing
behavior change strategies and systems for the strategies has been in the forefront of
advancing persuasive technology from early on [
The use of technologies as persuaders may shed a new light on the interaction process of persuasion, influencing attitudes and behaviors. Yet, although human-computer interaction is social in nature and people often do see computers as social actors, it is still unknown how these interactions re-shape attitude, beliefs, and emotions, or how they change behavior, and what the drawbacks are for persuasion via technologies. Humans re-shape technology, changing their goals during usage. This means that persuasion is not a static ad-hoc event but an ongoing process.
Technology has the capacity to create smart (virtual) persuasive environments that provide simultaneously multimodal cues and psycho-physiological feedback for personal change by strengthening emotional, social, and physical presence. An array of persuasive applications has been developed over the past decade with an aim to induce desirable behavior change. Persuasive applications have shown promising results in motivating and supporting people to change or adopt new behaviors and attitudes in various domains such as health and wellbeing, sustainable energy, education, and marketing.
The International Workshop series on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS) aims at connecting multidisciplinary researchers, practitioners and experts from a variety of scientific domains, such as information sciences, human-computer interaction, industrial design, psychology and medicine. This interactive workshop acts as a forum where experts from multiple disciplines can present their work, and can discuss and debate the pillars for persuasive technology. The Seventh International Workshop series on Behavior Change Support Systems comprises new and interesting work on BCSSs in general and also a more focused theme of longevity either as regards sustained use of a system or in terms of lasting effects. 2
Whether lifestyle-related or managing a chronic illness, behavior change requires
longevity. Either through sustained use of a system, or in terms of lasting effects. Where
it is necessary to observe and understand the immediate effects of BCSSs on behavior,
it is also necessary to highlight the need for the broader time span view on the use and
effects of these systems. For example, with chronic illnesses such as hypertension,
diabetes, or depression, the diagnosis and following treatments are often merely the
beginning for the patient, who then enters a life-long self-management process regarding
his or her condition. Similarly, a long-time favorite of the persuasive technology field
and BCSS interventions, obesity [
New technologies allow us to gather larger amounts of data from multiple sources,
e.g., multi-sensor data and self-tracking data, that can be used for customization and
personalization purposes. Where the focus was on small, exact datasets and causal
connections in the past (i.e. knowing “why”); advances in big data cause a paradigm shift
towards the gathering or linkage of large amounts of (noisy) data to demonstrate the
presence of (unexpected) correlational connections (i.e. knowing “what”) [
The persuasive technology field is becoming a linking pin connecting natural and
social sciences, requiring a holistic view on persuasive technologies, as well as
multidisciplinary approach for design, implementation, and evaluation. So far, the capacities
of technologies to change behaviors and to continuously monitor the progress and
effects of interventions are not being used to its full potential. Specific aspects of the
intervention (its content or the system) contributing to the results and user adherence
often remain unknown, known as the ‘black box’ phenomenon [
The use of technologies as persuaders may shed a new light on the interaction process of persuasion, influencing attitudes and behaviors. Yet, although human-computer interaction is social in nature and people often do see computers as social actors, it is still unknown how these interactions re-shape attitude, beliefs, and emotions, or how they change behavior, and what the drawbacks are for persuasion via technologies. Humans re-shape technology, changing their goals during usage. This means that persuasion is not a static ad-hoc event but an ongoing process.
Validated and suitable evaluation methods are needed, as well as mixed-methods approaches to measure engagement, emotions, and social influence of persuasive technologies in smart environments. BCSSs pose a number of specific challenges, such as personal goal-setting, personalized feedback, support for computer-mediated communication, 24/7 availability, feasible business models, as well as suitable methods and processes to develop scalable software platforms and architectures for these systems. 3
This year’s implementation of the workshop was organized in in conjunction with the 14th International Conference on Persuasive Technology 2019, in Limassol, Cyprus, by Prof. Sriram Iyengar (Texas A&M, USA) as Programme chair, and Dr Piiastiina Tikka (University of Oulu, Finland) as Organising chair. The founders and general co-chairs of the workshop series are Harri Oinas-Kukkonen (University of Oulu, Finland) and Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen (University of Twente, The Netherlands).
We wish to thank the following program committee members: • Dr Laurance Alpay, Inholland University, The Netherlands • Dr Grace Dal Sasso, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brasil • Dr Jose Florez-Arango, MD, Texas A&M, USA • Dr Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen, Aalborg University, Denmark • Dr Padma Narasimhan, MBBS, University of New South Wales, Australia • Dr Scott Sittig, University of South Alabama, USA • Dr Tugba Taskaya Temizel, Middle East Technical University, Turkey We also wish to thank several ad-hoc reviewers who volunteered to provide peer reviews for the submitted manuscripts. 4
In this seventh occurrence of the BCSS workshop, we have nine papers presented by a global network of researchers.
In the area of assistive and rehabilitation research Peres et al. present “Augmented
Crutches”, a persuasive system designed to assist those with impaired mobility enhance
independent movement and reduce dependence on therapists [
De Franco et al present a case for incorporating the Transtheoretical behavior
change model to design persuasive systems with sustained effectiveness [
Kashimoto and colleagues describe a persuasive system for encouraging use of
electronic coupons received on smartphones [
Overall, the rich variety of presented work at the workshop once again illustrated the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches and the benefits of viewing BCSSs from a variety of scientific perspectives. From such a multifaceted starting point we are bound to learn both the science and the art of building and studying BCSSs that work for the intended users in the intended manner. 5