Preface Little more than a decade ago, the majority of software applications and technologies were developed without much thought to how they influenced their users. With the dawn of smartphones, wearable devices and everywhere, the focus on usability, user needs and values has vastly increased. However, accessibility, ease of use etc. are one thing; the conscious and systematic design for change – that is, the conscious attempt to influence users – is, however, a considerable extra step.
Persuasive Technology (PT) is a vibrant interdisciplinary research field focusing on the design, development, and evaluation of interactive technologies. Persuasive Technology aims at changing people’s attitudes or behaviours through persuasion and social influence, but with strong considerations regarding transparency and ethics. The Persuasive Technology conference brings together international researchers and practitioners from industry and academia who are working in the field of behaviour design and persuasive technologies. As a community, we aim at enriching people’s lives in various domains such as health, safety, and the environment – by supporting their personal goals to change their behaviour.
Persuasive 2020 was the 15th international conference on Persuasive technologies and was hosted on the 20th-23rd of April, by Aalborg University in Denmark. The conference is the leading venue for researchers and practitioners from all corners of the world to meet, network and discuss cutting-edge theoretical and methodological perspectives and to present most recent insights from practice and research. For Persuasive2020, particular attention was directed towards creating bridges and networks between researchers and practitioners, and towards sustainability and green initiatives. This focus is closely related to Aalborg city’s role as a European Sustainable City, and its early involvement in international charters for sustainability.
In light of the worldwide CoVid19 epidemic, it was decided in March 2020 to reimagine Persuasive2020 as a virtual event. Recognizing that all members of the Persuasive Technology community were at this time working under new and extremely stressful conditions, lead to the solution of taking Persuasive2020 to social media, by combining various platforms. A distinct value of the Persuasive conferences has always been the bridges built between researchers and practitioners across continents, and by combining existing networks and platforms, the conference was able to reach more than
While the accepted full papers have been published by Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science, this volume contains the short papers, workshop papers, Doctoral Consortium papers and workshop descriptions accepted for the conference: • Descriptions of workshops and tutorial accepted for the conference: o 5th International Workshop on Personalizing Persuasive Technologies Workshop 2020, organized by Rita Orji, Jaap Ham, Kiemute Oyibo, Joshua Nwokeji and Oladapo Oyebode. o Behaviour Design Sprint – Let's play a game, workshop chaired by Anne-Kathrine Kjaer Christensen, Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen and Denis Damyanov. • Six workshop papers accepted for the 5th International Workshop on Personalizing Persuasive Technologies Workshop 2020. • Fifteen poster papers presenting small studies/experiences, project outlines, or work in progress. • Four position papers from PhD fellows accepted for the Persuasive 2020 Doctoral Consortium, describing research question(s), position with respect to state of the art and results achieved so far.
The included papers were reviewed by a board of experts in the field, in a blind or double-blind review process. Papers were selected for publication and presentation at the conference based on the review process. The editors of this volume have carefully assessed all reviews and all comments made by the reviewers and based on this the final list of papers to be accepted for publication was comprised.
The success of this conference was in every way dependent of the support of the Persuasive Technology Society, and in particular the people who actively contributed with publications or as reviewers for the different submission types. The Persuasive conferences is to a great extent an event which facilitates knowledge sharing and collaboration across nationalities and across different research areas. We as editors are grateful to have had the pleasure of creating the 2020 bridge between academia and practice – and between friends around the world.