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Encouraging an Active Lifestyle with Personal Mobile
Devices: Motivational Tools and Techniques

Richard Byrne Parisa Eslambolchilar
Computer Science Department Computer Science Department
Swansea University Swansea University
Wales, SA2 8PP, UK Wales, SA2 8PP, UK
csbyrne@swansea.ac.uk csparisa@swansea.ac.uk

ABSTRACT some design guidelines for mobile based motivational activ-
Encouraging physical activity amongst diﬀerent groups, age ity monitoring applications that we hope to apply in our
ranges and cultures can be a diﬃcult task. As such research own future work.
has been undertaken in order to find methods of allowing 2. RELATED WORK
people to monitor their own activity levels and hence allow
them to alter their lifestyle in such a way as they become In this section we will discuss various technologies and ar-
more active. It is possible to achieve this aim through a eas of research relating to the study of encouraging a more
number of methods, ranging for individual personal devices active lifestyle. We have categorised the topics into three
to making use of social groups and social feedback in order to sections and describe the relevant topics within those sec-
further encourage physical activity through the notion that tions.
friends can also monitor our progress. In this review paper 2.1 Personal Activity Monitoring Devices
we look at some of the work undertaken in understanding With people’s will to become more active and healthy
the desire of those who wish to become more active, paying there is no surprise that there has been a great deal of
particular attention to those with sedentary lifestyles. We personal portable devices released in order to allow people
also take a look at the technologies and methods utilised to to more accurately monitor and maintain their own levels
aid and motivate these people in achieving their goals. of fitness. The most common form of these devices is the
pedometer, a simple, small and unobtrusive device which
Categories and Subject Descriptors monitors the wearer’s step count. These devices are usually
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centred design, Input/Output attached at the hip and the most basic use mechanical parts
de- vices, Strategies, Hardware technologies, Interaction Styles that move when the wearer walks and thus registers a step
count. Research has shown that the physical presence alone
General Terms of the pedometer (screen is oﬀ) can increase the activity
Design, Human Factors level in adults [5].
However these devices can be more complex and allow for
Keywords more information than just the step count to be displayed.
One example is the PAM system1 which, like a normal pe-
Mobile learning, User experiences, Nudge, Social norms
dometer is worn on the hip and measures the wearers activity
1. INTRODUCTION level. The PAM makes use of an accelerometer in built in the
system which monitors all the movements of the wearer and
Motivating and encouraging physical activity can be a
displays the activity level as a PAM score. This score can be
challenging feat. At one time or another many of us are
viewed on the accompanying website, which allows the user
struck with the desire to join the local gym, go for a run or
to monitor their progress and set goals such as weight loss
tackle the latest fad diet. The diﬃculty comes in keeping
and find what their average score is. Slootmaker et al.[16]
up the commitment to pursue the goal we initially set out
found that the PAM was a useful and accurate tool for both
to achieve. Within a few weeks the motivation to go to the
monitoring and encouraging an active lifestyle.
gym can wain and that run we promised to go on can be put
The fitbit system2 is another unobtrusive activity moni-
oﬀ because we know that we will definitely go tomorrow. For
toring system that can be worn discreetly by the user and is
those of us with sedentary jobs these goals can be even more
used to monitor both activity levels and sleep patterns. The
of a struggle. As such, research has been ongoing in creating
system wirelessly communicates with a base station in the
a design methodology and technologies with the purpose of
home which in turn uploads the activity progress to a web-
encouraging and maintaining an active lifestyle.
site. The system monitors calories burned and steps taken
This paper gives an overview of some key literature relat-
and the website is used in order to set goals to aim for and
ing to the subject of encouraging an active lifestyle and gives
to keep track of the user’s activity patterns.
mention to how this aim was carried out by the respective
Obesity is seen as a rising problem in both adults and
authors and the results that they achieved. We then outline
children and can lead to many other health problems such
as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Arteaga et al. [4]
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). 1
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal. http://www.pam.com/index.php?pid=3
2
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3/10/09. http://www.fitbit.com/
argue in their paper that the key to combating obesity in 2.2 Personal Activity Monitoring on Mobile
adults is to target teenagers and educate them about the Platforms
potential health risks of overeating and leading a non-active Although, personal activity monitoring devices like pe-
lifestyle, thus believing that it is better to teach the issues dometers are practical for some people, for others it be-
sooner rather than later. Targeting younger generations in comes another thing to remember to carry. As such there
order to teach them the value of leading an active lifestyle is has been work examining the porting of activity monitoring
something that’s also been undertaken by large corporations. applications onto mobile platforms and, in particular, mo-
In particular Nintendo released an activity monitoring game bile phones. A quick browse of either the iPhone App store
for their DS system entitled Walk With Me3 . This game or the Android marketplace at the time of writing returns
comes bundled with two pedometer accelerometers in order many results regarding pedometer applications or activity
to encourage more than one member of the household to monitoring applications. All applications give an indication
take part in monitoring their levels of physical activity. The of your step count by making use of the onboard accelerom-
system allows the user to set a step target and is then used eters commonly found in many modern phones and some
in much the same way as similar step counters, however, (such as CardioTrainer) also include inbuilt GPS services al-
at the end of the day they can transmit the results to the lowing user’s to more accurately track their fitness progress
DS system where they can view a detailed breakdown of and, for example, their walking routes.
their activity levels for that day. This in turn provides the An extensive body of research has been conducted regard-
user with monthly and weekly averages of their step counts ing the subject of mobile based personal activity monitoring
and allows them to set new goals as and when they want applications. One such system is the UbiFit system [7, 11],
to. Their step counts can also be used to play mini games developed by Consolvo et al. The UbiFit system transforms
on the system, allowing for a competitive nature within the the background wallpaper on a mobile phone into a garden
family household. The system is even designed so it can scene. As users become more active or indulge in physical
be used with a pet dog, so that the user can also monitor activity throughout the week the garden grows, with sev-
their pets activity in comparison to their own. In all it is eral diﬀerent flowers representing various activities such as
a fun system which has been designed in order to make the walking, cardio or strength training. At the end of the week
monitoring of physical activity levels feel less like a chore the screen is wiped blank and flowers are regrown as activity
and to encourage individuals to keep going and reach the is undertaken again. The system also makes use of butter-
goals which they may have set. flies in the garden to represent goals that have been met
Tesco Diets Active4 oﬀers an online personalised coaching by the user and these butterflies remain when the rest of
programme. After enrolling to the programme, a wrist-band the garden is erased as a reminder that the user previously
called miband is sent to the customer. The miband records managed to reach their goals. The UbiFit system is not so-
everything the user does throughout the week, from house- ley contained to just the phone however and does make use
work to workouts and everything in between. The user can of an external activity monitoring device known as an MSP
synchronise their miband on a weekly basis with the online (Mobile Sensing Platform)[6] which has been trained to au-
coaching system via a Bluetooth connection. The online sys- tomatically recognise in real time various activities such as
tem allows the customer to set up weekly basis goals i.e. the walking and running. The system does also have an activity
distance to traverse. This is also combined with a range of diary feature so that any activities that cant be automati-
tasty healthy eating plans to facilitate a full healthy lifestyle cally inferred can still be manually entered. It is suggested,
makeover. that although this system makes use of an external module
There are also devices available to monitor and track indi- that eventualy phones will include the majority of sensors
vidual’s progress for those people who already lead an active required allowing for a user to simply slip their phone into
life and want to maintain their own progress. The Nike Plus their pocket at the start of the day, with no need to remem-
system, developed by Nike and Apple, allows a user’s iPod ber to wear an extra device, improving in cases where it may
to be used as a running aid which allows them to set dis- be impractical to attach a pedometer or MSP type device
tance goals and keep track of their progress as they train. to the waist and making it impossible to actually forget the
The system allows the user to specify a goal, such as the extra device since the phone is all you would requite.
amount of calories to burn or the distance to traverse. Also Nokia has conducted work into how such mobile based ap-
at anytime the user can press a button and receive audio plications should be designed. The findings of which appear
information relating to their current distance, run time and in several papers by Ahtinen et al. [1, 2, 3] and discuss the
pace. If they have set a goal then at key points along their design and user experiences of wellness applications. These
route they will receive an audio prompt notifying them that papers study issues that need to be considered when de-
them have completed some or all of their set goal.In addi- signing for cross cultural wellness applications, the social
tion the system also includes the voices of several prominent features of such applications and also the user interface de-
athletes who, at the end of the workout, congratulates the sign of the applications. The research has found that oﬀer-
user if they have achieved a new personal best.This informa- ing a gaming experience, social sharing opportunities and
tion can be uploaded to the Nike plus website which, as well proper feedback resulted in improved motivation from par-
as allowing you to challenge friends, gives a breakdown of ticipants. This work also provides a nice framework regard-
user’s progress and a complete history of previous workouts. ing design considerations and these findings are supported
by additional work by Consolvo et al. who have also pro-
3
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/games/nds/ vided their thoughts on design for such applications in [9,
walk_with_me_do_you_know_your_walking_routine_ 10]. These papers also study the use of persuasive applica-
10465.html tions on mobile devices and how the design of goal-setting
4 technologies in these systems can best be combined in order
http://www.tescodiets.com/index.cfm?code=370027
to create a comprehensive system that will yield the best celerometer of the phone to act out sword fighting. The
results for those wishing to pursue a more active lifestyle. system also made use of motivational agents - two avatar
2.3 Beyond the Physical Devices figures of a man and women, who would recite motivational
phrases to the player based on their personality. The male
Many systems make use of activity trackers and the ability
figure was more assertive whereas the female was more en-
to set goals to aim for and achieve and some of these sys-
couraging oﬀering supportive comments to motivate the user
tems allow users to involve their friends in this goal setting
to keep playing the games. Their main aim is in attempting
process, sharing their own progress and comparing it to that
to positively reinforce the feelings and experience of playing
of their friends. Friends are able to view and compare their
the game and hence keeping fit, with the memories of the
own progress to the user’s and also create group goals and
fun and positive feelings the system attempts to create.
begin friendly competitions. In the literature there exists
Fish’n’steps, developed by Lin et al. [13] is a game of
work relating to the design of interactive games promoting
sorts whereby participants manually submit the amount of
active lifestyles and this goal setting process. In this section
steps they have walked each day to a team of researchers.
we discuss this work and also work regarding the power of
These researchers then use this information to update an
social influence when promoting an active lifestyle.
avatar of a fish, which is used to represent the activity level
Consolvo et al. [8] make goal-setting the subject of an-
of the participant. In order to convey the activity level the
other of their papers which again details their UbiFit system.
researchers made use of emotion and size as a simple way
In this paper they argue how goal-setting in persuasive tech-
of conveying the activity, with the fish getting bigger and
nologies could be an eﬀective way to encourage behaviour
happier based on greater amounts of activity, and sadder
change and in particular, people’s attitudes to being phys-
and smaller based on less activity. Some participants were
ically active. From their study they found that the ability
also randomly assigned to a group where they could see a
for participants to self set their own goals was preferred and
fish based on the overall group activity and the results in
that goal timeframes set throughout a calendar week was
turn were used to investigate social influence and pressure
most beneficial to the users, especially if they could choose
to keep active. Lin et al. found that the game did indeed
when the week started.
increase peoples awareness of their own activity levels and
The importance and competence of self-setting physical
educated the participants so that when the study ceased
activity goals is examined in Saini and Lacroix [15]. In this
the game was no longer needed as the participants had a
paper the authors examined how people would set their own
concrete understanding of their own activity levels.
personal goals and in turn how these goals were achieved,
Ahtinen et al. also tackle the issue of social influence in
alongside examining how committed the participants were
[2]. Ahtinen et al. examine in this work how to design social
in achieving their own self assigned goals. This paper dif-
features and they detail a study in India which examined the
fers from the findings of Consolvo et al. in that the authors
design of wellness applications and the social interaction be-
found that often goals were not achieved since the partici-
tween people. The study found that role models, family and
pants were often too ambitious in the self-assigning of their
other people striving for the same results as the participants
goals. They also discussed how they found that participants
was a good motivational social tool that helped the users to
would, in general, often create goals which showed their in-
better achieve their aims.
tentions but didn’t accurately reflect their ability to accom-
Another system that makes good use of social encourage-
plish them. However they argue that goal setting in general
ment is detailed in Mueller [14]. The Jogging the Distance
was quite well followed and that it is likely a very important
system is targeted at runners. In particular it is targeted at
factor in motivational behaviour change with regards to en-
people who like to run together but due to broad geograph-
couraging physical activity. It is suggested that the over
ical diﬀerences in location often find it infeasible to meet in
ambitiousness of participants likely stems from their novice
person. As such the system makes use of GPS technology
experience with monitoring their own physical activity levels
and 3D sound in order to simulate to one user the respective
and their initial beginner experience regarding setting goals
position of the other. This is used as a motivational tool in
and changing their lifestyles.
order to provide support to individual runners and encour-
In a previous paper, Lacroix et al. [12] received similar re-
age them to keep going since their friend is still running and
sults when they examined the relationship between goal dif-
oﬀering words of support.
ficulty and performance of their participants. In this paper
they discovered that previously in-active participants im- 3. DESIGN GUIDELINES
proved their activity levels by setting goals for themselves. From the papers that have been discussed it is possible
It was also found, however, that participants who already to outline design guidelines for mobile based motivational
had an active lifestyle did not increase their own activity activity monitoring applications. For example much of the
levels to the same degree as the beginners. This is generally discussed literature agrees that social influence and the abil-
to be expected though, since those with an active lifestyle ity to set and aim for goals can be extremely helpful in en-
are likely already doing what they can to maintain it. These couraging participants to strive for the more active lifestyle
papers do support the findings of the papers we have dis- that they desire. As such it is possible to outline the features
cussed in previous sections though, as they show how there such a system could make use of:
is still a willingness in the participants to at least attempt 1. Goal Setting - In [8, 15, 12] goal setting was found to
to accomplish the goals that they set. be of great use and a key component in motivating the
Arteaga et al. [4] target teenagers in their study and cre- user’s of their systems in keeping active. It would be
ated a mobile phone based game which suggests diﬀerent beneficial therefore to include some form of goal setting
games that can be played based on the users personality. and reward system for users in mobile based systems
The system consists of games based in the real world, such as a way of motivating users to use the system and to
as searching for treasure shown on screen or using the ac- track their progress.
2. Social features - The ability for users to share their of mobile wellness applications in health promotion: User
progress to other users of the system is also a power- study of wellness diary, mobile coach and selfrelax. In
ful motivational factor. Allowing participants to view Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, 2009.
PervasiveHealth 2009. 3rd International Conference on,
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J. Salminen, E. Koskinen, and K. Laine. User experiences
Neighbourhood Wattch - Community Based Energy
Visualisation For The Home

Chris Elsmore, Max L. Wilson, Matt Jones, Parisa Eslambolchilar
Future Interaction Technology Lab
Swansea University, SA2 8PP, UK
elsmorian@gmail.com, {m.l.wilson, matt.jones, p.eslambolchilar}@swansea.ac.uk

ABSTRACT Many systems have been developed to help individuals
In this paper we describe an investigation into a social, track their own energy consumption or waste production, as
community-based electricity and waste visualisation. We discussed in the next section, but we are unlikely to reduce
present a system that, through visualisations suitable for all global energy consumption without working together. We
ages, can display the electricity consumption and waste pro- sought to develop a system that a) was accessible to the
duction of a community. This system, originally deployed whole household, and b) places our energy consumption in
online, was analysed during a month-long user study, which the context of other people in our communities. The aim
found that, although eliciting an initial popular response, is to help households work together, with each other and
was not suﬃciently embedded in daily life to have a long other households, to reduce global energy consumption. We
term eﬀect. Thus a separate device was prototyped to give believe that the implications of adding social awareness and
the system a permanent, more pervasive presence in a house- a mobility to household metering has not been properly re-
hold. Additionally, we argue that such a system could be searched, and that it may have a significant influence on the
easily adapted for personalised mobile use, and would bene- long term behaviour of users.
fit from the more frequent interactions with, for example, a In the rest of this paper, we first introduce a system de-
user’s mobile phone. We also present challenges in produc- signed to be both accessible to the whole family and socially
ing this interface on a mobile device, and open discussion on aware. We then describe a study where this system was
how this is best achieved. deployed within five households for one month. Our find-
ings indicate that although an online social network pro-
vides good motivation for change, it is not suﬃciently built
Categories and Subject Descriptors into daily routine to have a long term benefit. We then de-
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centred design—Input de- scribe an initial investigation into a prototype device that
vices and strategies, Interaction Styles, Prototyping places this socially aware system more pervasively into the
living space and conclude with our hypothesis that a mo-
General Terms bile deployment of this socially aware system will provide a
more personalised experience to nudge and influence energy
Design, Human Factors
consumption behaviours.

Keywords
Nudge, behaviour, influence, energy, consumption
2. BACKGROUND & RELATED WORK
In light of the recent interest in ‘green’ living, table-top
1. INTRODUCTION style household electricity monitors have increased in pop-
ularity as a method of gathering precise realtime domestic
Current scientific reports and investigations into the causes electricity data conveniently, instead of the imprecise data
and extent of climate change, such as the IPCC Fourth from a typically diﬃcult to access household electricity me-
Assessment Report on Climate Change [8], together with ter. Installing these monitors is arguably a proven way of
other green issues such as peak oil, rainforest destruction reducing a household’s consumption- a study for the De-
and renewable energy (which received significant investment partment of Environment Farming and Rural Aﬀairs by the
of over $150 billion in 2008 alone [7])have heightened public University of Oxford identified a saving of 5-15% on aver-
interest in environmental issues. This interest is spurred on age household consumption from the addition of a monitor,
by increased media coverage and campaigns such as 10:101 , as the occupants of the home became more aware of their
which aims to cut 10% of UK emissions in 2010, and the usage [3]. However, the current range of table-top moni-
Prince’s Rainforest Project2 , a campaign spearheaded by tors provide limited feedback to users, usually based on a
HRH The Prince of Wales against rainforest deforestation. numerical display which requires knowledge of the units of
1
More information available at http://www.1010uk.org/. power - Watts (W), and energy - Kilowatt Hours (kWh),
2
Available at http://www.rainforestsos.org/. which are used to represent electricity consumption. A no-
table exception to this is the Wattson device, which glows in
diﬀerent colours depending on the amount of electricity be-
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal. ing consumed. In addition to this, despite supporting user
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3/10/09. experimentation in the home with relation to how diﬀer-
ent devices aﬀect overall household electricity consumption,
current monitors feature no further incentive to reduce con-
sumption, and after an initial interest, the energy savings
can decrease as the novelty factor of the monitor itself wears
oﬀ for the occupants of the home [2] in a boomerang eﬀect.
Future visualisations based on the data already available
from such commercial monitors could be used to create more
engaging and meaningful visualisations for households. Cur-
rent research is being done into the possibilities of using lo-
cal household data in new ways, to increase the visibility of
such data in everyday lives such as the Weigh Your Waste
[6], and WattBot [9]projects. Weigh Your Waste involves an
in-home visualisation of the status of a user’s rubbish bin,
and uses the weight of the waste currently in the bin to cal-
culate the cost of disposal. The WattBot project aims to
create an iPhone application that shows a user’s home elec-
trical use, broken down by the room or appliance, to indicate
where the majority of energy is being consumed, and how
diﬀerent rooms and appliances compare. We believe these Figure 1: Scale of visualisations through electricity
systems can be made increasingly eﬀective by the addition and waste consumption and production.
of other households’ data, providing both a reference point,
and a possible goal to aim for. This social side of such a
system is ideal for mobile use where comparisons of energy
usage, recycling amounts and tips on how to improve could
be shared between individuals using mobile devices.

3. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATTCH
Our goal was to design a system that was accessible to
the whole family, and so we used the participatory design
method [1] to engage with a class of school children to design
a suitable visualisation. In this case it was used to form
initial ideas regarding the types of visualisation children felt
were suitable for showing waste and electricity data in the
home. As Druin and colleagues suggest [5], children can
oﬀer valuable insight into how they themselves think, what
they like and dislike, and what they can relate to. Figure 2: The visualisation for the community.
A group of 10 and 11 year old children in a class at a local
primary school took part in a design session, creating ideas
to represent both electricity use and waste production. This implemented through a website as shown in Figure 2. The
age group lies on the upper bounds of where children are site took readings of waste and electricity data from each
the most descriptive and self-reflective whilst still lacking participant, and used this to generate the visualisation along
pre-conceived ideas and methods, often resulting in truly with other statistics, displaying this data when the partici-
original ideas [4]. The children were presented with two pant logged in.
examples of existing electricity monitors, and then asked to
produce one waste and one electricity design to represent
the same information through a visualisation. 4. USER STUDY
These visualisations were then analysed for common fea- A qualitative user study was designed to investigate the
tures, and used as a basis for designing the final visualisation impact that the Neighbourhood Wattch system had on a
used in the system. The children’s designs had a number of household’s perceptions and behaviours regarding their elec-
popular themes in common, for example the use of colour tricity usage and waste production. Further the study recorded
such as traﬃc light style devices or lights that lit up in the their actual usage throughout the month when using a sys-
same green, amber and red colours, which were popular for tem that visualised multiple households’ electricity and waste
depicting electricity usage. Other themes included depic- data alongside the user’s own. Finally the study explored
tions of forests which changed in size, depictions of them- the energy usage and waste production of households with
selves or people close to them changing in size or getting young children in general.
older and younger, and pictures of rubbish bins that got The study took place over a period of four weeks. Each
progressively full of recycling or rubbish. These themes were participating household was supplied with an electricity mon-
combined to create the final visualisation used in the system itor, and a set of weighing scales to measuring the weight
- a house depicts each diﬀerent household, with rubbish and of rubbish they threw out. In the first stage which lasted
recycling use mapped to the amount of black bags and re- one week, participants’ daily electricity use, as reported by
cycling bins, and the electricity use mapped to the number the monitor, and the weight of their rubbish and recycling,
of trees and window colours, as can be seen in Figure 1. were recorded onto a sheet of paper, to get them used to
The system we developed consisted of this visualisation using the monitoring hardware. The second stage also ran
for one week and involved recording the same data but us-
ing the website described previously, however participants
could only see their own data. The third and final stage
made up the remaining two weeks, and used the same web-
site as in the previous stage, but enabled the community
visualisations.
Prospective households were contacted via the class that
was involved in the visualisation participatory design exer-
cise. Five households willing to partake in the study were
found, each of which had at least one child in their final years
(9 and 10 years old) at school. Apart from this similarity
other aspects of the households varied, such as the prop-
erty sizes, attitudes towards the environment and ‘green is-
sues’; three of the five households recycled materials such as Figure 3: Revised system prototype with projector
tin foil, TetraPaks and batteries, which were not collected display, showing the community visualisation.
from the kerb-side and therefore required a separate trip to
the municipal site, whilst one reported recycling very little.
These diﬀerent households gave the study a wider scope to 6. REVISED SYSTEM
investigate the eﬀectiveness of visualisations on households Further to these results a refined, more pervasive system
with diﬀering attitudes and behaviours. was prototyped, designed taking into account the issues that
participants had identified with the existing system, and to
address these problems it was decided that the refined sys-
5. RESULTS tem must consist of a device similar to the electricity mon-
All participants experimented with the electricity moni- itor, but be capable of displaying the same information as
tor when it was first installed, exploring how much energy the website. The table-top electricity monitor was attractive
diﬀerent devices use in their homes (which confirmed find- to the households as it required nothing more than a casual
ings by Darby et al. [3]), and for a number of participants glance to assess how much electricity was currently being
the study served as a constant reminder to be more energy used. By comparison the website required logging in, and in
conscious. The community section of the website provoked some cases the additional time of turning the computer on.
interest among participants, but the electricity monitor was It was decided the new system would also support automatic
the primary cause for behaviour change in the households. updating of waste production, using a method similar to the
Despite the focus on the monitor, participants were still Weigh Your Waste project [6], involving wireless scales fit-
aware of their presence on the website, and how they ap- ted to rubbish bins to monitor the weight of the contained
peared to other participants. Participants felt guilty when waste.
seeing the community page and identifying other people who The refined system was prototyped before being presented
were using less energy them them; one household, for exam- to the participants of the previous study for feedback in
ple, commented: “I looked at other people’s houses online, a think aloud session. The new system, shown in Figure
and saw averages of less than four and I thought ooh oh 3 was designed to include a table-top display device that
dear!”. Another stated: “We trimmed all the hedges! We would show the community visualisation, whilst automati-
should have put that in see, that would have made us bet- cally recording the electricity and waste use from the house-
ter!”, reaﬃrming their wish to look good to other people on hold providing a more pervasive interaction than the previ-
the community section of the site. ous system.
Whilst the system was well received by all participants, a
number of common and key issues arose through the study 6.1 Reactions
period. Whilst the website received praise from participants The new system was met with enthusiasm from most par-
regarding its functionality and ease-of-use, when changing ticipants, with all but one household agreeing that it was
from the paper sheet recording to using the website, partic- better than the first system. This participant liked the re-
ipants did not record as many readings. When queried, the fined system, but commented that it wasn’t a system they
participants admitted they did not use their computer on a would use in their home, they thought they were as green as
daily basis and turning it on just to enter the reading was they could possibly be: “It’s not for me, as we turn oﬀ elec-
considered too time consuming: “Everyday I noted it down tricity as much as possible anyway, and we also recycle as
on the calendar usually what it was at the end of the night, much as possible.” They did however state that they would
but I didn’t always have the energy to put it in - I don’t al- be willing to use such a system for research purposes, to help
ways have the computer on everyday.” Another household refine it further.
commented “It’s quite a responsibility doing it every night”, All other households expressed an interest in the new de-
“Unless you’re in the habit of going on the computer every vice, and all said they would use it in their homes. They
night for something anyway”. much preferred the fact that the device provided all the in-
In addition, the participants did not generally use or ex- formation on its own display and did not require using a
plore the website apart from updating readings, thus the computer, for both accessibility and speed reasons – two
main feedback from the electricity use came from the energy households stated they thought the new system was easier
monitor itself, with most participants only looking through to use, with the large display being “Clear and easy to un-
the community section of the site once or twice during the derstand” and “More user friendly, and I don’t need to log in
study. - time eﬃcient.” They also commented that if it was in the
home directly, “The children would like the interactivity of combined with ubiquitous internet connected mobile devices
it”, and all households stated they would prefer to place this has meant that for a lot of people, they are in constant com-
device in the kitchen or dining room, in places they frequent munication with friends and colleagues. This social network
in the home. popularity could be exploited with revisions of neighbour-
hood Wattch into a social service. This would have scope
6.2 Towards Mobile Device Design from comparing individuals in a home and how they con-
tribute to the overall energy use, how they compare individ-
While it is clear that the socially aware aspect had a posi-
ually and as a family to other individuals and households,
tive impact on people’s energy consumption, the exact form
how houses in a street compare in a town, or how towns com-
of Neighbourhood Wattch requires additional research. One
pare throughout the country, possibly including such moti-
logical hypothesis is that Neighbourhood Wattch should be
vators as weekly goals, or challenges and leader boards. We
deployed on mobile devices, so that it can be integrated even
believe tight integration with existing social networking ser-
more into daily practices. The revised prototype presented
vices combined with mobile alerts, or notifications of such
above had the benefit of being better integrated into rou-
challenges would highly increase it’s eﬀectiveness.
tine, but several participants were unsure about the use of
additional technology in the house to reduce energy con-
sumption. There are several advantages to creating more 7. CONCLUSIONS
personalised mobile device applications for Neighbourhood In this paper, we have described an investigation into a
Wattch: 1) many people keep mobile devices on their per- system that promotes and facilitates better awareness of en-
son throughout the day; 2) it allows the user to keep track ergy consumption by placing it in the context of a user’s
of their consumption while out of the house; 3) it allows community. Neighbourhood Wattch lets users know not
individuals to track finer-grained physical spaces such as only whether they have reduced their energy consumption,
their own room; 4) individuals can have a personalised age- but allows them to see whether or not their consumption
appropriate view of their energy consumption; 5) it allows is good or bad when compared to other people. While our
people to share and compare their energy consumption when investigation indicates that social awareness of energy con-
visiting others. One downside is that it may be harder for sumption did motivate better energy consumption, the vi-
families to engage with the visualisation together. Another sualisations had to be pervasive and embedded in daily rou-
is that the physical presence of the monitor in the house is tines to have long term eﬀects. We believe that Neighbour-
taken away. We would suggest that the presence of Neigh- hood Wattch would be better able to nudge and influence
bourhood Wattch on a mobile phone should be made per- behaviour if deployed on users existing mobile-devices, but
manent by an icon in the corner or an ambient indicator, must maintain permanent presence to be eﬀective.
to capture the same benefits as a permanent installation in
the house. These pros and cons should be discussed fully in 8. REFERENCES
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one based in a native application for these devices would Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford,
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such as one without touch screen or colour display would Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., 1998.
not support the web interface as is, and would require a
[5] A. Druin. Cooperative inquiry: Developing new
redesigned interface specifically for them which we believe
technologies for children with children. In Proc. CHI
would still not provide a compelling and engaging experience
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due to the hardware limitations of such devices.
[6] A. A. Gartland and P. Piasek. Weigh your waste: a
Newer devices however present an increased range of pos-
sustainable way to reduce waste. In Proc. CHI 2009,
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these newer devices could be used to determine how house-
holds in the immediate vicinity of the user compare to their [7] C. Greenwood, V. Sonntag-O’Brien, and E. Usher.
own use, or remind user when they have left their home Global trends in sustainable energy investment 2009.
which appliances have been left on for example. Addition- Report, UNEP and New Energy Finance Research,
ally, the feedback from actuators such as a devices screen 2009.
brightness, vibration levers or even auditory signals could [8] R. Pachauri and A. Reisinger. Contribution of working
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visiting friends could also be a conversation point for dis- [9] D. Petersen, J. Steele, and J. Wilkerson. Wattbot: a
cussing how savings were made. residential electricity monitoring and feedback system.
The rise of such social tools such as Twitter and Facebook In Proc. CHI 2009, pages 2847 – 2852, 2009.
Motivating physical activity at work: Using persuasive
social media extensions for simple mobile devices

Derek Foster, Conor Linehan and Shaun Lawson
Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre (LiSC)
University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool
Lincoln, LN6 7TS
+44 (1522) 837086
defoster@lincoln.ac.uk

A BST R A C T UK only 11.6% of adults are classed as physically active by taking
part in moderate exercise 5 times or more a week [4]. Physical
Powerful behaviour change programmes can be developed exercise has also been shown to improve health conditions such as
through a combination of very simple, accessible technology, and heart disease and depression [2]. This paper reports on the use of
an understanding of the psychological processes that drive a simple mobile device (SMD) ± a digital pedometer - and a social
behaviour change. We present a study in which very basic digital application to improve physical health in a specific environment:
pedometers were used to record the number of steps taken by the workplace. As figures suggest that UK workers spend up to
participants over the course of a normal working day. A 60% of their waking hours at work [9] there is scope to utilise
Facebook application, named Step Matron, was utilised to provide some of this non-social time to encourage more physical activity.
a social and competitive context for pedometer readings. We
In recent years a number of researchers have conducted studies to
were particularly interested in whether interactions between users
evaluate the potential of using pedometers as health interventions
via the application more successfully motivated physical activity
in the workplace (e.g. [5], [3]). Chan et al. [3] report a substantial
than simply recording daily step counts in a similar application.
study involving 1442 employees over a 12 week period in which
Ten participants (1 male), all nurses working in a UK hospital,
pedometers were used to measure the effects of two types of
used the application across two conditions over the course of the
motivational structures on physical activity. These two
study. In the socially-enabled condition, participants could view
motivational structures were; health education (control group),
HDFK RWKHU¶V VWHS GDWD DQG PDNH FRPSDULVRQV DQG FRPPHQWV ,Q
and personal/team goal setting (intervention group). Analysis of
the non-social condition, participants could only view their own
WKH VWXG\¶V DFWLYLW\ GDWD UHYHDOHG WKDW RI SDUWLFLSDQWV LQ WKH
personal step data. A significant increase in step activity was
intervention group met the US governments recommendations
observed in the socially enabled condition. Our findings highlight
compared to 31% in the control group. It appears that the social
the potential of social media as a means for generating positive
interactions and competitiveness engendered by the team goal
behaviour change. They also suggest that simple mobile devices
setting, including the use of posters displaying and comparing
can function as an inexpensive, accessible and powerful trigger
team performances, may have had a significant impact on the
towards this behaviour change without necessitating the use of
results observed.
overly complex and expensive mobile applications or devices.
Interestingly, Chen et al. [3], did not utilise any technology-
C ategories and Subject Descriptors enabled feedback other than the pedometer display itself, in either
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): the control or intervention groups. Thus, the social and
Miscellaneous competitive feedback presented to participants was indirect,
infrequent and over a long period of time. The current paper
suggests that offering users more direct and frequent online social
General T erms feedback, could lead to both a more enjoyable experience for the
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors
user and more positive gains in recorded physical activity.
In this study we leveraged an extremely popular contemporary
K eywords online social network (OSN) - Facebook - in combination with
Persuasive technology, lifestyle, health, mobile devices, 60'¶V LQ RUGHU WR HQJDJH SDUWLFLSDQWV LQ D WLmely and playfully
pedometers competitive manner with their step activity. The intention was to
demonstrate the value of using an online social application to
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N record data, display feedback and facilitate on-topic discussion,
Modern lifestyles are becoming increasingly sedentary [10]. In the thus eliminating the need for the user to wear anything other than
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
a cheap off-the-shelf pedometer. We are engaged in a number of
MobileH CI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal . studies in which we are evaluating the viability of using social
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3/10/09 .
.
platforms in general to motivate and encourage positive
behavioural change. For instance, this approach has been used
successfully in raising awareness of the ecological impact of
energy use in the home [8].
We designed and developed the Facebook application Step
Matron using the Facebook API [6] and then evaluated it through
a user study. The user study followed a within subjects design
with each participant taking part in two conditions or social
modes. In condition A, Step Matron was socially enabled, for
example participants could see their frienGV¶ VWHSGDWDDVZHOODV
their own; in condition B the Step Matron application was
manipulated so that there were no social features available and so
participants could only see their own personal step activity. Our
hypothesis was that participants would be more active when using
the socially enabled condition of Step Matron when compared to F igure 1. Silva E x3 Plus Pedometer used in study
the non-social condition.

2. E xperimental Method In the study conducted here, participants manually self-reported
2.1 Participants their step count data as a task in the Step Matron software. Step
Ten Registered Nurses (Nine females and one male) were Matron then offered users the ability to compare their step data
recruited through a personal contact to trial Step Matron. All of ZLWK RWKHU XVHUV DQG DOVR WR SRVW FRPPHQWV RQ WKHLU SHHUV¶
the nurses were employed within the same hospital ward and activity. Additionally, personalised Facebook notifications were
personally knew each other as friends. Additional criteria for sent to each of the participants in the study who had all added
recruitment were that they must have been regular users of Step Matron to their Facebook profile, as shown in figure 2.
Facebook for the past 12 months and that all participants must be
RQHDFKRWKHU¶Vfriends list on Facebook.

2.2 Design
In order to examine whether the social interaction element of the
application was necessary over just recording and displaying
feedback, we created two conditions; socially-enabled and non-
social. In the socially-enabled condition, participants could view
HDFK RWKHU¶V VWHS GDWD DQG PDNH FRPSDULVRQV DQG FRPPHQWV ,Q
the non-social condition, participants could only view their own
personal step data. The independent variable was therefore Step
0DWURQ¶V LQteraction mode, either social or non-social. The
dependent variable was the number of steps taken by each
participant, with a total step count being recorded in each
condition for each participant.
7KH H[SHULPHQW¶V FRQGLWLRQV ZHUH FRXQWHUEDODQFHG WR DYRLG
ordering effects. This was done by creating two groups quasi-
randomly, each group containing 5 participants. Group 1 started
in the social condition, group 2 in the non-social condition and F igure 2. Notifications to other participants who are using
the condition that each participant experienced was switched Step M atron
halfway through the experiment. Thus, each participant
experienced both conditions, and order effects were controlled for A rankings interface displayed the total step count for each
as carefully as possible. participant in a table format with the highest total step count
placed at the top of the table. Each participant in the table was
selectable for a breakdown of their previous 7 day step count and
2.3 M aterials for personal messaging. At the bottom of the rankings table a
In order to generate activity data that we could use within the Step
public comments board was available for posting messages
Matron application we used a commercial off-the-shelf pedometer
viewable by all. The rankings table provided the competitive
± WKHµ6LOYD([SOXV¶ [12] as shown in figure 1.
attribute of Step Matron - as well as providing an opportunity for
social interaction to take place, centred on step activity.
condition, with mean step ratings of 42004.4 and 38132.1 for
social and non-social conditions respectively.
A Wilcoxon statistical test for repeated measures of non-
parametric data showed that the total number of steps taken was
significantly higher when participants used the social condition
(Z= -2.5, N=10, p=0.013).

F igure 3. Step M atron Rankings interface F igure 4: Participant step activity in each condition

Other goal-driven features were implemented such as displaying Additional data collected from Google Analytics provided an
ZKR KDV ZDONHG WKH µPRVW VWHSV LQ RQH GD\¶ RQ WKH UDQNLQJV insight into how often the participants across both conditions
interface with a star rating. This provides the participants with a logged on to Step Matron. In the 21 days the experiment was run,
mini-goal to work towards which supplemented the goal of there were 1142 pages views, with 224 unique visits to the Step
attaining highest total step count. An overall group measurement Matron application, equalling 5 page views per visit. The average
was incorporated which showed the total number of steps taken by time spent during each visit was 6 minutes 11 seconds,
all participants with the equivalent mileage walked. highlighting that users of the application were willing to spend
Submitted step data from the participants was stored in an MS some of their own time in interacting with Step Matron.
SQL database, with all data stored anonymously. The Google Additionally, the users spent an average of 1 minute 46 seconds
analytics service was also used to record the number of Facebook on the step input interface, but spent almost a minute longer when
application page views IRUHDFKRI6WHS0DWURQ¶VLQWHUIDFHV interacting with the rankings interface at 2 minutes 37 seconds. It
may be assumed that participants enjoyed the rankings interface
2.4 Procedure due to its social and game like properties ± a league table and
Each participant gave their informed consent and undertook the comments board.
experiment by carrying a Silva Ex3 pedometer during working
hours and entering their step data into Step Matron after each 3. Discussion
working shift was completed. The experiment took place over a This paper has described the design, deployment and evaluation
period of 21 days with each participant submitting 5 working days of a system that utilises a Facebook application to extend and
of step activity in each condition. Half of the participants started support an SMD in persuading participants to increase physical
in the social condition with the other half starting in the non- activity in the workplace. Participants recorded a significantly
social condition. Once all participants in each group had higher number of steps in the social condition than in the non-
submitted 5 working days of step data they were sent an email and social condition. This finding suggests that social interaction over
notification through Facebook informing them of the changeover an online social network, such as viewing each RWKHU¶V step
of conditions. Step Matron was then reprogrammed to perform in counts, comparing own usage to that of peers, and commenting on
the alternative conditions with the relevant participants. each other¶s progress, can help motivate participants to increase
Crucially, in order to deter participants from over-reporting step- physical activity in the workplace.
count data, all participants were briefed at the beginning of the Comments from the participants showed they enjoyed the
study that the pedometers stored historical activity, and that this competitive aspect with feedback such as ³ooooh im number 1 so
would allow researchers at the end of the study to validate the far :-)´. Interestingly, a comment was made that moved the
accuracy of all self-reports. context of the physical activity from the workplace out into the
personal social space, ´was out dancing fri night, can you
2.5 Results imagine how many steps that would have been!!!´with a response
The steps recorded for each participant in both conditions are
IURP DQRWKHU SDUWLFLSDQW VKRZLQJ HPSDWK\ RYHU WKH µORVW¶ VWHSV
summarised in figure 4. Analysis found that 9/10 participants
³aaahhh sha me! Wouldve bin loads x´
walked more steps in the social condition than in the non-social
The increased effectiveness of the social condition over the non- investigation. In particular, there is potential to improve the
social condition in the current study may be explained by design of the experiment by empowering teams of participants as
literature on social psychology. The desire to belong and well as the individuals directly. Future work direction would
willingness to adapt behaviour to follow what others are doing has likely include game like mini-goals for both the individual and
been seen as a fundamental motivator [1]. Social norms such as team orientations.
peer pressure have also been seen as a means of changing
behaviour to align with the ideals or beliefs of groups [11]. Whilst 5. A C K N O W L E D G M E N TS
there is insufficient space to give a full account of the This work was funded by NHS Lincolnshire. Our thanks go to the
psychological theories of social motivation, effecting behavioural nurses of the Haematology units at the Royal Hallamshire
change through computer mediated social applications seems Teaching Hospital (Sheffield, UK).
promising.
Behavioural change is no easy feat and more often than not 6. R E F E R E N C ES
technological endeavours fail to make an impression on the target [1] Baumeister5)DQG/HDU\05³The need to belong:
users [7]. It has been suggested that one of the main reasons for Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental
this is that designers of persuasive technologies often set goals human motivation.´ Psychological Bulletin, 117, 1995,
that are too difficult for users to attain and work towards, 497±529.
ultimately they give up trying. Effectively, the results of this study [2] Bravata, D.M.. ³Using pedometers to increase physical
indicate that the participants themselves can provide motivational activity and improve health: A systematic review.´ JAMA,
goals for each other by simply allowing them to interact over a 298, 2008, 2296-2304.
competitive social networking application.
[3] Chan, C.B., Ryan, D.A.J. and Tudor-Locke, C. (2004)
Interestingly, the current study suggests that SMDs can function ³Health benefits of a pedometer-based physical activity
as successful triggers for positive behaviour change, when intervention´ In Preventive Medicine, 39, 2004, 1215-
delivered as part of a larger programme. Specifically, the 1222.
conclusion drawn above was that the social and competitive
interactions occasioned by the social version of the Step Matron [4] Department of Health (2008) Health Profile of England
Facebook application motivated participants to become more 2008 : Department of Health ± Publications, available from
physically active during work. However, it is difficult to http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publicati
understand the process through which this competition was ons/PublicationsStatistics/DH_093465
maintained, as participants did not have access to the Facebook [5] Dishman, R., DeJoy, D., Wilson, M., and Vandenberg, R.
application during working hours. Rather, participants only had ³Move to Improve, A Randomized Workplace Trial to
access to a simple digital read-out of their daily step-count from Increase Physical Activity´ American Journal of Preventive
the pedometer during working hours. Thus, it is apparent that the Medicine, 36, 2009, 133-141.
competitive activities occasioned by the Facebook application
[6] Facebook, (2010) F acebook Developers, available from
were not only in action while participants used the application,
http://developers.facebook.com/
but also throughout the rest of the day; and that the SMD
functioned as a trigger for these competitive activities. [7] )RJJ % ³Three possible futures for persuasive
technology.´ In Proceedings of the 4th international
This study also demonstrates that social network applications can
Conference on Persuasive Technology, 2009, Article
serve as a powerful context that allows participants to understand
Number 18.
quantitative behavioural measures as more than mere numbers.
For example, when participants in the current study occasionally [8] Foster, D., Blythe, M., Cairns, P., and Lawson, S.
viewed their step-counts while working, it is possible that these ³Competitive carbon counting: can social networking sites
were considered not purely as the number of steps taken, but as make saving energy more enjoyable?´ In Proceedings of the
steps closer to beating their friend, steps closer to winning, or as a 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on
performance that needed to change in order to achieve equality Human F actors in Computing Systems, 2010, 4039-4044.
with fellow participants. Without the competitive Facebook [9] Peersman G, Harden A, and Oliver S. Effectiveness of
application, this would not have been possible. Health Promotion Interventions in the Workplace: A
Review. London: HEA, 1998.
4. Conclusion
The current study demonstrates that the carefully considered [10] Rajaratnam, S., and Arendt - ³+HDOWK LQ D -K VRFLHW\´
combination of two simple technological elements, informed by The Lancet, 358, 2001, 999-1005.
an understanding of successful behaviour modification [11] Schultz, P.W., Nolan, J.M., Cialdini, R.B., Goldsteing, N.J.,
programmes, can be effective in motivating behaviour change. and GrisNHYLFLXV9³The Constructive, Destructive and
This finding could prove valuable when designing the architecture Reconstructive Power of Social Norms.´ Psychological
of future persuasive technology, as it suggests that complex Science, 18, 2007, 429-434.
applications on complex devices are not necessary to motivate real
[12] Silva, (2009) Pedometers ± S ilva5, available from
behaviour change in users. Although the paper describes a
http://www.silva.se/en/Products/Exercise-4-life/Pedometers/
relatively small scale study, it provides encouraging results and
presents scope for a scalable implementation in a larger workplace
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Ethics and Persuasive Technology:
An Exploratory Study in the Context of Healthy Living

Rachel E. Page Christian Kray
School of Computing Science School of Computing Science
Newcastle University Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
r.e.page1@ncl.ac.uk c.kray@ncl.ac.uk

ABSTRACT and assisting people in living a healthy lifestyle. Particularly in
Persuasive Technology has been heralded as a new paradigm to industrialized nations, the latter is rapidly becoming a very
change people’s behavior to improve various aspects of everyday pressing issue. In the UK, for example, and estimated 24.2% of
life. In combination with mobile and ubiquitous delivery adults are considered to be obese [1], a condition which has been
mechanisms, persuasive technology has the potential to reach and shown to cause a number of short and long-term illnesses such as
influence people everywhere and at any time. While there are diabetes. Alcohol abuse is a similar problem of comparable
clear benefits to be gained from this approach, there are obviously proportion and impact [9]. These two issues are predominantly a
ethical considerations that need to be taken into account and that result of misbehavior, and specific persuasive technologies could
currently are not well understood. This paper aims to contribute be created to help to correct this behavior and thus to reduce the
towards a better understanding of ethics in persuasive technology. number of people affected by these problems. However the use of
We present results from a focus group session and an online such technology does also raise some ethical questions, e.g. with
survey on the use of persuasive technology in the context of respect to which measures are acceptable in what context, and it is
healthy living. The results indicate that the “golden rule of these ethical issues that this paper is investigating.
persuasion” [5] might not always be applicable to persuasive Ethics can be defined as “the moral principles governing or
technology, that self-initiated persuasion per se may always be influencing conduct” [2], and it is clearly dependent on the
acceptable, and that there may be a link between the purpose of cultural context, as moral principles will differ between cultures.
persuasion and the means used to persuade. The findings can be (Therefore, the results of the studies are limited to Western
used to inform the design of future persuasive interventions. European/British context.) When considering ethical implications
of persuasive technology, there are a number of factors that could
Categories and Subject Descriptors potentially play an important role in determining whether a
H.5.m [Information Systems]: Information interfaces and particular piece of persuasive technology is considered ethical or
presentation – miscellaneous. not. These factors include: the user of the persuasive technology;
the commissioner behind the persuasive message; the persuasion
method used; and the technology being used. One goal we were
General Terms pursuing with our research was thus to identify the relative
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors. importance and relationships of these factors.
In the following, we first briefly summarize related work
Keywords before discussing insights gained through a focus group session.
Persuasive technology, ethics, healthy living, user studies. We then present the questionnaire study we conducted based on
the findings of the focus group, and discuss its results as well as
1. MOTIVATION its implications for the design of persuasive technology. A brief
Persuasive technology can be defined as “any interactive summary concludes the paper.
computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or
behavior” [4], which can be applied in a wide range of scenarios. 2. BACKGROUND
Mobile (and ubiquitous) devices are very well suited for the Persuasive technology [3] is a relatively new area in Human-
delivery of persuasive content as they can sense contextual factors Computer Interaction, which focuses on using technology (such as
of relevance to a specific user (such as location and/or task) and mobile phones, web sites and other means) to change the behavior
tailor messages so that they are delivered in the most effective or attitude of people. According to Fogg [3], computers benefit
way. Considerable potential has been attributed to this technology from several advantages over humans when persuading others
in terms of helping people to change their behavior [10]. such as being able to persist indefinitely or the option to exploit
One key area, which could greatly benefit from persuasive the positive image of computers. Fogg also asserts that one has to
technology, is healthy living. For example, it could be applied to analyze intentions, methods and outcomes of an instance of
areas such as disease management and prevention, improving care persuasive technology in order assess its ethical implications [4].
In our studies we considered these as well as further factors.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
1st int. Workshop on Nudge & Influence Through Mobile Devices
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal.
.
Berdichevsky and Neuenschwander [5] focus directly on the certain area, as teenage girls often are with regards to weight and
ethics of persuasive technology. They outline ten principles for body image. We also hoped that the fact of a private company
ethical design of persuasive technology, including the so-called being behind it would be picked up by the focus group.
golden rule of persuasion. It states that designers of persuasive Scenario B was a website for young adults to monitor their
technology should not create any artifact that persuades someone alcohol intake and be persuaded to drink less through social
to do or think something that they (the designers) would not want comparisons. The website was provided by the Government to
to be persuaded of themselves. One of the goals of the work support people to change their own behavior. Questions driving
reported in this paper is to test this golden rule in a specific this scenario were whether website would be perceived as an
context (i.e. healthy living). effective way of delivering persuasive content relating to healthy
Persuasive technology does not exist in a vacuum, so we need to living, and what subjects would make of the use of social
select an application domain. We chose to focus on healthy living comparisons in this context.
[6] not only to control the complexity of the user study but also Scenario C was a purpose built embedded device for morbidly
because it is a global and growing problem that has been obese adults to change their eating habits by delivering drastic
identified as a key future research challenge [7]. Chaterjee and messages such as “Keep eating like that and you’ll be dead soon”.
Price [8] provide an overview of specific issues and challenges. It was commissioned by their doctor and paid for by the NHS.
The study presented in this paper expands on their work by This scenario was designed to test extreme conditions and their
including further persuasive methods and empirically assessing impact on perception of what would be ethically acceptable. It
their ethical implications. was also meant to evoke an emotional response to be discussed
Our work uses key factors of ethical relevance that were identified and any limits that should be placed upon this kind of technology.
in previous work. We extend the list of these factors and study the Scenario D was a text message system, similar to the warnings on
ethical acceptability of specific combinations through focus group cigarette packets, which were being sent to a mobile phone at the
sessions and a questionnaire-based survey. time when the user was about to have a cigarette. A commercial
company was presumed to be behind the messages. Key features
3. FOCUS GROUP SESSIONS of this scenario were the pro-active delivery of persuasion as well
as the inclusion of contextual factors into the equation.
In order to gain a better understanding of relevant aspects relating
to ethics and persuasive technology in the context of healthy Finally, scenario E investigated the use of a game to persuade
living, we organized two focus group sessions. We were children to eat more fruit. It encouraged them to ask their parents
particularly interested in people’s understanding of persuasive for fruit. The initiators in the scenario were their teachers, who
technology, their reaction to different types of persuasive encouraged them to play the game. The main goal of this scenario
techniques, and which combination of factors would be perceived was to investigate if manipulating children in this way was
as being ethically acceptable. In addition, we wanted to test a set acceptable and whether ‘disguising’ persuasion as a game would
of scenarios in order to select the most useful ones for the raise any concerns.
subsequent survey study.
3.2 Outcomes and Observations
In total, seven students from local universities were recruited The results from the ranking task administered prior to the
through word of mouth and via a group set up on a social discussion are summarized in Figure 1. The diagram highlights
networking website. We ran two separate focus groups to keep the that except for scenarios A and D there was a very clear ordering,
number of participants manageable. Both sessions were recorded where C was rated as being lowest, E rated highest, and B second
on video, which was later partially transcribed. After a brief initial highest. While the limited number of scenarios used prevents a
discussion about ethics and persuasive technology in general,
participants were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire, where
they had to rank several scenarios according to how ethically
acceptable they were. The scenarios were then discussed within
the group on and individual basis first. At the end of the session,
we encourage subjects to discussing and comparing all scenarios.
In total, we designed five scenarios based on the factors identified
in previous work (intent, methods, outcome) but we also included
the commissioner of a piece of persuasive technology, the
influencer as well as the actual recipient of the persuasive content.
By focusing the discussion on five distinct scenarios, we aimed to
limit high-level/matter of principle types of discussion, and to
probe specific combinations of factors. We also hoped that Figure 1 – Ranking of scenarios according to how ethically
concrete examples would provide participants with a better acceptable they were rated, 1=very ethical, 5=very unethical.
understanding of what persuasive technology could be in practice.
direct analysis with respect to which factors are the key drivers
3.1 Scenarios behind people ranking the scenarios as they did, the ranking
Scenario A was a food diary mobile phone application for teenage provides some initial indication that the severity of an outcome
girls that provided incentives and motivated the users to follow a may have some considerable impact. Results with respect to the
healthy diet. It was created and influenced by a private company. vulnerability of the recipients of persuasion are somewhat
We designed this scenario to spark a discussion about using inconclusive (as the two scenarios including children and girls)
persuasive technology on a group that may be vulnerable in a
are rated quite differently. We were somewhat surprised by the 4.1 Material and Procedure
comparatively low ranking of the texting + smoking scenario, Three scenarios from the focus group sessions were adapted for
which we believed to be much more acceptable. This might the questionnaire: one scenario related to encouraging people to
indicate that the proactive delivery of persuasive content may be exercise more while at a gym, a second one picked up on helping
an important factor to consider (which is a key reason why mobile people to quit smoking, and the final one was built around helping
devices and ubiquitous environments are considered to be very people to change their eating habits. Instead of fixing the three
well suited for persuasive technology). factors mentioned above, we systematically varied them and then
From the video material we also transcribed a number of asked participants to rate them on a five point Likert scale.
comments that highlighted various aspects and relationships with For each scenario, we asked people to assess the ethical
respect to applying persuasive technology in the context of appropriateness of a particular technique for two distinct groups
healthy living. For scenario A, one participant remarked that “if of people: healthy people and people who had a condition, which
the NHS was behind it and it was backed up by research it would meant that they could greatly benefit from changing their
be ok, the problem is the private investor and influencer”, which behavior. For the eating scenario, for example, we asked the same
hints at the importance of who is commissioning an instance of questions twice: once for regular people and once for morbidly
persuasive technology when assessing it’s ethical acceptability. obese people.
Another subject stated that “girls have their mobile phones with
them all the time and might receive the incentives all the time, but In terms of initiator we also considered two levels for each
it still encourages healthy eating so it’s still a good thing”, which scenario. One always referred to self-persuasion (i.e. the user
provides some evidence that context-awareness may be chose to use a piece of persuasive technology to change their
considered ethical under certain circumstances. behavior) and the other one was an external entity. In the first
scenario, this entity was the gym (a commercial company), in the
Most comments about scenario B questioned the effectiveness of second on it was the NHS (National Health Service – a
this approach (“people would use this to compete on how much governmental institution), and in the third one the Quick Smoking
they could drink, especially groups of guys on a night out”) but Campaign (a not-for-profit organization).
were not concerned about the ethical implications it might have
(“It is not unethical but unworkable, you wouldn’t check the The final key factor identified during the focus group sessions was
website as you were drinking”). the means use to persuade people. We chose five different
techniques, four of which are feasible with today’s technology, in
Scenario C attracted a lot of discussion, in particular with respect particular using mobile phones, and one that was meant to be an
to the ‘shock tactics’ being used. Participants voiced concerns extreme example (electric shocks). The four feasible techniques
about the effects of this method on people’s well-being, e.g. were: text messages sent to a users mobile phone, public
“people who are obese may have low self esteem and if they use announcements at the location of the user (so that bystanders
this it may make them depressed”, “this is controversial because would know about the failure of the user to change their
of the messages, if users are repeatedly told they are going to die, behavior), notification of friends on Facebook (so that friends
they might give up and eat more anyway”, or “the messages can’t would learn about a user’s performance), and restrictions to the
be impersonal and attack people or it will have an effect on their user’s bank account (e.g. restricting the amount of money being
psychological well-being.” However, subjects also came back to available to the user depending on their behavior).
the question of who commissioned the technology: “The use of
this device depends on a persons character and self esteem, it’s ok For each scenario, there were 20 questions, where participants hat
if it’s their choice to use it, it’s person specific.”, “It is being given to rate the ethical acceptability of statements describing a specific
to them by their doctor so it will be ok, their doctor will check combination of factors in the context of this specific scenario. We
their mental stability.” published the survey on a commercial web service and advertised
it through a number of mailing lists, web sites and groups on
This aspect of who was behind the persuasive message was social networking sites. 72 participants (36 male, 36 female)
discussed for scenario D as well: “c company is making money completed the survey. The majority of subjects (61%) fell into the
and they could use it to take advantage, if the NHS were behind it, 18-25 years old bracket, with a further 9.7% reporting being
it would be ok; if it is promoting other products such as patches, between 26 and 35 years old. Equal numbers (11.1% each)
then it is unethical.”, “but some private companies already prompt indicated their age as being between 36 and 45, respectively 46
people not to smoke, it is just another venture.” The discussion and 60. 6.9% reported being over 60 years old.
also brought up a general benefit of computer-based persuasion
compared to a human trying to persuade someone: “you would get 4.2 Results
cross at friends trying to make you stop, it’s a good thing, We analyzed the results according to different dimensions and
persistence is good.” factors but due to space (and time) restrictions, not all results of
the study can be reported here. In the following paragraphs we
4. SURVEY STUDY summarize some key results that potentially have some
Based on the observations and feedback we gathered during the implications for the design of persuasive technology in the future.
focus group sessions, we created an online questionnaire to With respect to the initiator/commissioner of an instance of
investigate ethical issues pertaining to the use of persuasive persuasive technology, we re-affirmed that if a person decides to
technology in the context of healthy living. In order to narrow use persuasive technology, then even drastic measures such as
down the number of factors being investigated simultaneously, we electric shocks are considered predominately unethical. Figure 2
chose to focus on the three aspects that were mentioned most summarizes the responses we obtained for the three scenarios.
frequently during the focus group sessions: the recipient, the
commissioner and the means of delivery.
The picture was more diverse when looking at how ethically into the ethics of using persuasive technology to promote healthy
acceptable rated various scenarios. We were not able to identify a living. One interesting aspect relates to the golden rule of
clear trend across all three scenarios. When analyzing different persuasion [5] – based on our observations, this rule may have to
means to deliver persuasive content, we found that they varied be revisited as self-chosen persuasive technology appeared to be
considerably in terms of how ethical they were considered to be. perceived as being generally more ethically acceptable
Text messages were the least problematic, followed by public irrespective of the means being used. Related to this, there also
announcements and Facebook notifications. Interestingly, was a trend to rate more drastic measures (such as electric shocks)
Facebook announcement appeared to be rated slightly more more ethically acceptable in cases where there was much at stake
unethical than public announcements. The most unethical means (such as persuading people with cardio-related illnesses to
were bank account restrictions and electric shocks, with the latter exercise in order to improve their condition).
consistently being rated as being unethical or very unethical.
There are some lessons designers of future persuasive technology
can draw from our studies. We identified three factors that seem
to be relevant for people to assess the ethical acceptability of this
kind of technology: the recipient, the commissioner, and the
means of delivery. It may thus make sense to clearly convey these
aspects to users when implementing persuasive technology. We
also found evidence that social pressure, such as caused by public
announcement or automatic posting on Facebook groups, can be
very problematic. Consequently, such techniques need to be
carefully analyzed before being implemented. Finally, we
specifically included aspects of context adaptation, which are key
benefits of persuasive technology built on mobile devices and
ubiquitous environments. The focus group sessions hinted at this
being perceived as ethically questionable but we did not find a
Figure 2. Ethical acceptability of different means to deliver clear trend with respect to this aspect in the survey study. Further
persuasion when self-chosen research in this area is therefore needed.
The third factor that we had identified during the focus group
sessions was the recipient of the persuasive content. For each 6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
scenario, we had asked about a healthy and an ill adult. Figure 3 This work reported in this paper was partially supported by the
depicts the results we obtained when plotted according to this EU-funded Balance@Home project.
dimension. As can be seen from the graph, there are considerable
differences in terms what participants deemed to be ethically 7. REFERENCES
acceptable depending on whether or not the recipient is healthy or [1] BBC News. 2009. Obesity in Statistics.
ill. For example, almost twice as many subjects considered it to be http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7151813.stm, retrieved 10
ethical or very ethical to restrict access to a person’s bank account May 2010.
if they were ill (and would thus suffer potentially fatal [2] Def. of ethics, Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2009.
consequences if they did not respond to the persuasive message.
[3] Fogg, B.J. 1998. Persuasive Computers: perspectives and
research directions. Proc. of CHI 98, ACM, 225-232.
[4] Fogg, B.J. 2003. Persuasive Technology: Using computers to
change what we think and do. Morgan Kaufman Publishers.
[5] Berdichevsky, D., and Neuenschwander, E. 1999. Toward an
ethics of persuasive technology. Communications of the
ACM, (42) 2, 51-58.
[6] IJsselsteijn, W., de Kort, Y., Midden, C., Eggen, B., and van
den Hoven, E. 2006. Persuasive technology for human well-
being: setting the scene. Proc. Persuasive ‘06, Springer, 1-5.
[7] Intille, S. 2004. A new research challenge: persuasive
technology to motivate healthy ageing. IEEE Transactions on
Information Technology in Biomedicine, 8 (3), 235-237.
[8] Chaterjee , S., and Price, A. 2009. Healthy living with
persuasive technologies: framework, issues and challenges.
American Medial Information Association, 16 (2), 171-178.
Figure 3. Distribution of ratings sorted by technique used [9] Lehto, T., and Oinas-Kukkonen, H. 2009. The
contrasting ill and healthy recipients
persuasiveness of web-based alcohol interventions. Proc. of
I3E ‘09, 316-327.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS [10] Tørning, K., and Oinas-Kukkonen, H. 2009. Persuasive
The results reported in the previous section as well as the system design: state of the art and future directions. Proc. of
outcomes of the focus group sessions provide some initial insights Persuasive 2009, 30
Nudging the cart in the supermarket:
How much is enough information for food shoppers?

Peter M. Todd Yvonne Rogers Stephen J. Payne
Indiana University The Open University University of Bath
Bloomington Milton Keynes Bath
IN 47406, USA MK7 6AA, UK BA2 7AY, UK
001 812 855-3914 011 44 1908 652346 011 44 1225 384085
pmtodd@indiana.edu y.rogers@open.ac.uk s.j.payne@bath.ac.uk

ABSTRACT about? Technology pundits and researchers are beginning to
The amount of information available to help decide what foods to promote ‘augmented reality’ that uses Smartphones and other
buy and eat is increasing rapidly with the advent of concerns ubiquitous technologies as the latest solution to this problem.
about, and data on, health impacts, environmental effects, and Kuang [7], for example, marvels at the possibility: “What if all
economic consequences. But this glut of information can be the food in your grocery store was marked with a QR code — you
distracting or overwhelming when presented within the context of could compare the carbon footprints of two batches of produce…
a high time-pressure, low involvement activity such as without having to spend any time or effort looking it up…” He
supermarket shopping. How can we nudge people’s food continues by claiming it is “The best chance we have to speed
shopping behavior in desired directions through targeted delivery crucial information about our world to the people living in it”.
of appropriate information? We are investigating whether This vision, however, begs the research questions: Will people be
augmented reality can deliver relevant 'instant information', that able to read and act upon such ‘instant information’? Will just
can be interpreted and acted upon in situ, enabling people to make throwing more information at people have the desired galvanizing
more informed choices. The challenge is to balance the need to effect of encouraging and empowering people to act upon various
simplify and streamline the information presented with the need social causes (e.g., reducing carbon emissions) or improve their
to provide enough information that shoppers can adjust their well-being (e.g., changing their diet)? Or do we need to tailor
behavior toward meeting their goals. that information glut into simple nudges that make behavior
change easy to achieve? And if so, what kind of nudges will work?

Categories and Subject Descriptors Having instant information at one’s fingertips is certainly a
promising technological approach but for it to succeed in
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation/methodology.
changing people’s behavior we need to understand how new
forms of augmented reality are interpreted and used, especially
General Terms when in situ. While the capabilities of the emerging technologies
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors. are impressive in how they can project contextualised
information, there is a paucity of research into whether people can
Keywords process and exploit that extra information profitably. While it is
Food information displays, supermarket shopping, ambient easy to imagine soda drinkers enjoying the surprise of being
information interfaces, simple heuristics presented with a new branded game or a funny website on their
mobile phone it is less clear whether people will make greener
and healthier choices whilst managing their weekly budget when
1. INTRODUCTION presented with extra information of one form or another in the
Increasingly we are told about the risks, costs, and benefits of middle of their busy shopping trip. Thus, research is needed,
particular food choices. In response, a flood of information is firstly, to determine whether instant information will enable
becoming available, online, on food labels, in information leaflets people to make better-informed choices when shopping and
and books, from a variety of sources, aimed at informing the secondly, to ascertain whether and how such information is able
consumer so that better decisions can be made while shopping. to change people’s behavior in the longer term.
But all this information risks overwhelming and overloading the
Technology for ubiquitous information delivery must balance
shopper trying to navigate the complex store environment in a
giving people enough new information to improve their decisions
hurry, leading to the opposite outcome—poor decisions made
against overwhelming them with new things to consider. Ambient
without the proper input. How can all this information be
information displays, as already used in homes and offices to
consolidated, pruned down, and presented to supermarket
provide feedback about energy consumption and nudge users
shoppers in an easy to understand and meaningful form that will
toward greater conservation, may strike the right balance in food
actually help them make better choices about values they care
purchase and consumption as well. However, as we discuss
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal. below, moving beyond momentary nudges toward long-term
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3/10/09.
behavior change requires providing detailed-enough feedback to More recently, Bargrams have been developed for e-commerce
enable learning what to do in the future, for instance on the next applications. For example, EZChooser helps consumers choose
shopping trip. We argue that we must improve our (currently one item from many (e.g., cars) through selecting attributes that
limited) understanding of whether and how people attend to and are visualized as parallel horizontal interactive histograms along a
learn from visualizations of multi-dimensional information while number of dimensions [16].
engaged in an ongoing activity such as food shopping, using But even though these kinds of visualizations are mostly targeted
cognitive science models of decision-making and learning at non-expert users, they are essentially visual query languages
together with design principles for information visualization and that require considerable cognitive effort to interpret. Can relevant
interaction design. dimensions of products such as food be represented in simple
ways that can be glanced at and perceived rapidly to guide
2. BACKGROUND shopping decisions in situ?
Rational theories of decision-making [e.g., 15] posit that making a
choice involves weighing up the costs and benefits of different 3. DISPLAYING NUDGES
courses of action. When alternatives are ordered on more than one We propose that rather than providing ever more information to
relative dimension, this involves compensatory strategies where enable consumers to compare products in minute detail when
information is processed exhaustively and trade-offs made making a choice, a better strategy is to design technological
between features. Such strategies are very costly in computational interventions that provide just enough information and in the right
and informational terms – not least because they require the form to facilitate good choices. One solution is to exploit new
decision-maker to find a way to compare apples and oranges. forms of augmented reality technology that enable ‘information-
Non-compensatory strategies may be used instead as a form of frugal’ decision-making, in the context of an intensive activity
bounded rationality where not all of the available information is replete with distractions (i.e., shopping in a supermarket or
used and trade-offs can be ignored [10]. Furthermore, recent deciding at the kitchen table what to have for dinner).
research in cognitive psychology has shown people tend to use An important consideration when representing multiple
simple heuristics of this sort when making decisions [6]. A dimensions that can be glanced at and perceived rapidly is to
theoretical explanation is that human minds have evolved to act enable comparisons to be made and cumulative information
quickly, making ‘just good enough’ decisions by using fast and inferred in situ. For example, simple contrasting icons (e.g.,
frugal heuristics. We typically ignore most of the available thermometer icons, percentage bars, balls that change in color)
information and rely only on a few important cues. In the can be presented which increase or decrease in amount in relation
supermarket, shoppers make snap judgments based on a paucity to the values being represented. Another approach is to fuse
of information, such as buying brands they recognize, are low- relative measures on different dimensions (e.g., greenness, price,
priced, or have attractive packaging [12] – seldom reading other fat level) into singular displays where shape carries the salient
package information. information, such as a rectangle that gets taller to convey a
At the same time, recent consumer surveys reveal that shoppers nutritional dimension that is general (healthiness) or specific (e.g.,
are demanding more information about the products they buy and salt content) and wider to convey price. A third dimension, such
are becoming increasingly aware of the global consequences of as ‘greenness’, could be added by filling in the rectangle with a
the decisions they make [4]. This raises the question of whether it shade from red to green to show the amount of carbon emissions
is possible to encourage people to pay attention to more for that product. Similar to the idea behind Chernoff faces, the
information, such as nutritional, ethical, and environmental visualizations will be placed side by side to enable quick
features, when making their food purchases and subsequently comparisons.
deciding how to use what they have bought to make healthy meals Another important question is whether to use ‘emotive’
that have a low carbon footprint. visualizations that can persuade people to select food items they
However, there is a scarcity of research on how people use multi- might not otherwise choose. Various persuasive technologies have
dimensional information under time pressure and the extent to recently been developed to encourage people to take more
which it effects rapid decision-making [5]. Visualization research exercise. Examples include Fish‘n’Steps [8]; Chick Clique ([13]
has tended to adopt an unbounded rationality perspective, and UbiFit [2] where various types of graphic representations
assuming that people have the time and cognitive capacity to pull (e.g., butterflies, flowers, bar charts) are used to represent amount
out and use whatever information the displays provide. Within the of exercise type performed, e.g., cardio, strength training, and
field of Information Visualization there have been a number of walking. Findings from a three-month field trial of UbiFit showed
tools that have been developed specifically to represent that these display systems can be motivating, encouraging
multidimensional data that allow for comparisons [1]. Other participants to maintain fitness levels that were significantly
simple canonical forms such as tables and trend graphs have been higher than for a control group without the visualizations [3].
developed for web-based decision-making activities, including
More dramatically, Shultz et al. [11] have shown how emoticons
online shopping, making investments, choosing insurance policies
can have a powerful effect on changing behavior for energy
or buying a house. An innovative approach has been to develop
consumption. In their study, a number of householders were told
interactive visualizations that show some aspects of the
exactly how much energy they had used and the average
performance of objects for a range of different parameter values.
consumption of energy by others in their neighborhood. The
An early example was the Influence Explorer [14] that allowed a
above-average energy users then significantly decreased their
user to compare how products (e.g., a light bulb) perform on core
energy use while the below-average energy users significantly
values (e.g., brightness and working life) when varying multiple
increased theirs (presumably because they felt they had more
parameters (e.g., diameter, length, material and number of coils).
room to increase their consumption). But then the researchers them feel good in front of other shoppers [11]? Would the
tested the effect of instead giving householders who consumed prospect of others seeing just how much butter and cheese they
more than average an unhappy smiley icon – suggesting it was are buying make shoppers think about buying less, or just
socially disapproved – and those who consumed less than the thinking about shopping elsewhere?
norm a happy smiley icon – suggesting their energy consumption Assuming such an ambient information display Cumulative Tool
was socially approved. The impact of providing these two achieves the desired features of providing some feedback without
visualizations was dramatic: The big energy users showed an even overloading the decision maker, without undesired effects of
larger decrease in their energy use while the below-average users scaring shoppers off or making them “boomerang” and offset their
did not change their energy consumption upward (presumably good behavior with poorer choices, the question remains whether
because the addition of the happy emoticon suggested they were this kind of simple display provides enough feedback to allow the
doing just fine). shopper to adjust behavior in the desired direction, e.g. reduced
sodium or enhanced green-ness. Seeing that one’s entire cart is
4. LEARNING FROM NUDGES red-lining above the goal level may motivate behavior, but it does
What then is a good way to provide appropriate information not directly indicate what to do to bring the level back down.
quickly and simply to shoppers in order to aid their decision- Thus, we must develop and test methods for ensuring that the
making during the hectic, distracting setting of a trip to the (minimal) information delivered is actually actionable and
supermarket? Here we assume the shoppers have selected a conducive to behavior change.
particular dimension that they care about and want to change in
terms of their buying behavior—for instance, choosing products There are at least three approaches that can be taken to solving
that are lower fat, or more sustainably grown. To inform shoppers this problem, which is essentially one of allocating global
about how they are doing in achieving this particular goal during feedback appropriately to individual choices of products (akin to
their shopping expedition, cumulative values of the dimensions of the “credit assignment” problem in machine learning). First, we
interest across all products chosen so far could be summed up and could leave it all up to the users, and assume (or hope) that when
displayed in an ambient manner as the current ongoing overall they end their shop with a “green” cart, they will buy more things
score “projected” onto the handle of the shopping cart as a color. like those the next time around, and when they get a “red” cart,
For example, a green handle could signify that the shopper has they will buy different things next time. This leverages the
obtained a ‘carbon footprint’ or ‘fat content’ score below their human shopper’s intelligent ability to learn from diffuse
target (or below some population average), while a red handle reinforcement over time, but it will probably be slow, requiring
would indicate that the cart’s contents are above the desired level, many shopping outings before reliable change occurs. Second, to
with intermediate levels indicated by intermediate colors (see speed up this process, we could provide more specific feedback
Figure 1). about each product that goes into the cart, for instance
momentarily flashing the ambient display with a color
corresponding to the box of sugar-frosted chocolate bombs or bag
of figs being chosen. This will allow shoppers to make more
targeted decisions about each product, provided they remember
that individual feedback.
Third, to remove the need for such memory, a further interface
can be developed to let shoppers query how they should adjust
their purchases to come closer to their goal. This could take two
main forms. A Comparative Tool could run as a ‘private’ mobile
application on a smartphone or PDA and be displayed on the
device or somewhere in the environment, such as the shopper’s
hand or the product package itself. After identifying the product
via a photo or code scanner, the tool will show the product values
on the dimensions of interest, and indicate whether this product
Figure 1: Two hypothetical shopping carts with (a) red and helps or hinders the achievement of the current shopping goal.
(b) green glowing handles, indicating aggregate ‘healthiness’ This interface could also be used in a comparative manner,
of products selected relative to the average for a weekly shop scanning two or more products while they are still on the shelf
for a family of four and then showing at a glance which product is best based on the
selected dimensions.
Such an ambient and publicly visible display must first be studied As a second ‘off-line’ form of providing more explicit feedback, a
to see if it fits with how people want to shop, or engenders Collaborative Tool running on a home computer or surface
unexpected side-effects. Will people be more or less likely to display would allow shoppers to find out further information
change their behavior when information about the contents of about the products they have bought once they get them home,
their shopping cart is publicly visible for all to see rather than along with input from their families. Multiple users could reflect
being privately displayed? Would shoppers try to fill their cart and discuss together the decisions behind their food purchases
with healthy and green foods and on finding they were under the with a view to attaining their goals at their next weekly shop,
average then treat themselves to luxury goods high in fat and food exploiting collaborative planning and social pressures that take
miles? Would having their shopping cart glow green at the check- place in a family setting. An interactive planner application would
out, indicating the contents were well below the average, make enable family members to find out more about particular
dimensions (e.g., nutritional values) on a product, meal, or [4] EDS IDG Shopping Report (2007) Shopping Choices:
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has selected as an informational layer. Alternative items can be
of-pack nutrition labelling: Testing effectiveness of different
swapped with the chicken, such as tofu, which may then be shown
nutrition labelling formats front-of-pack in 4 European
by the application to have a higher greenness value (i.e., smaller
countries, Appetite, 50, 57-70
carbon footprint). Finally, specific shopping lists could be
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one-size-fits-all approach. Springer
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move people in the direction of better decisions—in the food Griskevicius, V. (2007) The constructive, destructive and
shopping domain, or in other applications—remains to be seen. reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science,
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a pace that is sufficiently rapid and noticeable to be rewarding Chick clique: persuasive technology to motivate teenage
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[3] Consolvo, S., McDonald, D.W., and Landay, J.A. (2009)
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behavior change in everyday life. Proc. CHI '09, 405-414.
Motivate Environmentally Sustainable Thermostat-Use
through Goal-Setting, Just-In-Time Recommendations, and
Behavior Reflection

Christian Koehler Anind K. Dey
M-ITI, University of Madeira HCI Institute
Campus da Penteada Carnegie Mellon University
9020-105, Funchal, Madeira Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
christian@m-iti.org anind@cs.cmu.edu
Jennifer Mankoff Ian Oakley
HCI Institute M-ITI, University of Madeira
Carnegie Mellon University Campus da Penteada
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 9020-105, Funchal, Madeira
jmankoff@cs.cmu.edu ian@uma.pt

ABSTRACT systems provide quality of life improvements at the cost of
Rising power demands resulting from technological advance- placing strain on limited global resources. As recognition
ments is an increasingly important global issue. One way and awareness of this trend have grown, there have been
to tackle this problem is to motivate individual behavior increasing calls for citizens to use resources responsibly. In-
change, for which the ubiquity of mobile phones oﬀer an vestigations into how energy is consumed in homes provide
ideal platform to influence consumption behavior of users. valuable suggestions for how this goal can be achieved and
In this paper we explore the possibilities for using timely indicate that temperature regulation systems (such as fur-
recommendations, goal-setting, immediate feedback, and vi- naces and air conditioners) are a key target. They are re-
sualization of past consumption behavior in order to mo- ported to be responsible for nearly 25% of the consumption
tivate people to reduce power consumption resulting from in an average American household [7].
heating/cooling devices. We describe a mobile application Despite the high-energy consumption (and costs) incurred
which gives the user direct access to the thermostat and by these systems, studies indicate that there are problems
provides feedback everyday on how sustainable the user was with devices intended to increase their eﬃciency. For in-
on the previous day. In addition to this feedback, it gives stance, programmable thermostats are capable of decreasing
recommendations to improve the behavior and also oﬀers a the energy use of a temperature regulation system by re-
behavior overview. The contributions of this paper include a laxing the maintained temperatures during particular time
working system for remote control over the thermostat and periods, such as when homes are empty during the work-
a goal-setting, recommendation, and feedback application day. However, 14% of users are reported to not own such a
designed to influence a user’s behavior. system and, of those that do possess one, over 40% do not
use it [8]. Widespread misconceptions also exist regarding
suitable home temperatures. For instance, a 2007 interview
Categories and Subject Descriptors study [5] reported that 41% of interviewees believed that
H5.m. [Information interfaces and presentation]: e.g., room temperatures should be lower in summer than in win-
HCI ter. The authors concluded this results in overly cool rooms
in summer wasting a lot of power.
Keywords These findings also suggest that, generally, people have
poor awareness of how their consumption choices and be-
Eco-feedback, Sustainability, Environmental HCI
havior aﬀects the environment. Sensing technologies capable
of capturing a user’s activity can be combined with digital
General Terms displays of consumption (e.g., websites, ambient displays,
Design, Human Factors mobile devices) to address this issue and raise awareness of
the impact of particular choices. Such systems and devices,
1. INTRODUCTION which are intended to inform users about the current state
Technological advancements over the past few decades of their consumption and their impact on the environment,
have allowed us to live more comfortable lives at the cost are known as ”eco-feedback technology” [3]. Eco-feedback
of consuming increased amounts of energy. Devices like re- technology can be used to motivate users to change their
frigerators, air conditioning units, or home entertainment long-term behavior.
Research in psychology can inform the development of sys-
tems that change a user’s behavior. In a recent survey paper,
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
He et al. [4] discussed a wide range of psychological lit-
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal.
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3. erature and developed a ”motivational framework based on
the Transtheoretical (or Stages of Behavior Change) Model”. this goal was met the day before, the current week, or the
One of their conclusions was that behavior change happens current month. We provide the user with the challenging
in stages and that each stage should be supported by quali- goal of reducing at-home temperature to 65°F, because pre-
tatively diﬀerent kinds of feedback. vious work has shown that more attainable goals, although
An earlier review of environmental psychology papers per- easier to achieve, have lower rates of success [1].The system
formed by Abrahamse et al. [1] evaluated the eﬀectiveness is designed to inform the user and motivate him to change
of two intervention strategies - antecedent and consequence his long-term behavior. We intentionally combined goal-
strategies. They described antecedent intervention to ”influ- setting with feedback techniques and tailored information
ence one or more determinants prior to the performance of to increase the chances that people will reduce energy con-
behavior” and considered four techniques: commitment, goal sumption.
setting, information, and modeling. One of the conclusions Through a mobile phone application, the user is oﬀered
they drew was that presenting the user with one of these in- remote control over the thermostat. This allows error re-
terventions alone is not suﬃcient, but for example combining covery in case the user forgot to set the thermostat before
them with other techniques such as feedback proved eﬀec- leaving the house. In addition to supporting manual and
tive in influencing behavior. Consequence strategies on the programmatic control of the at-home temperature, we also
other hand are based on the assumption that providing users oﬀer automatic control over the thermostat, reducing energy
with positive or negative consequences will influence behav- consumption when the user is not at home, and returning
ior. They analyzed how diﬀerent forms of feedback (e.g., the at-home temperature to a desired level when the system
continuous, daily, weekly, monthly, or comparative) and the predicts the user is returning home. In doing so, the system
presence of real world rewards influence behavior.They con- aims to support the user in setting the right temperatures.
cluded that individual feedback combined with comparative The advantage the system oﬀers a user is not only er-
feedback provided also energy reduction in the long run. ror recovery through remote control, but also feedback if
Rewards on the other hand had only a short-term eﬀect ac- a behavior was environmentally positive or negative. Ad-
cording to their analysis. This strongly suggests that mak- ditionally it provides positive reinforcement if the behavior
ing users aware of their consumption behaviors is an eﬀec- the day before was positive or timely suggestions on how to
tive method for encouraging their reduction. This is the improve the behavior in case it was not positive.
approach adopted in this work. To support the automated control of the thermostat, we
We suggest that mobile devices are an ideal platform on gather continuous location information using a mobile ap-
which to oﬀer motivation to users and convey benefits in- plication. Using the current location and past movement
compatible with the functionality of stationary devices. For data we are able to determine the time a user is predicted
example, we can use sensors provided by mobile phones (e.g., to return home. We leverage a robust location prediction
location sensor, accelerometer, etc.) to infer the user’s cur- algorithm developed by our research group, which aims to
rent activity and predict future ones. This functionality can predict future destinations based on prior and current move-
be used to provide just-in-time feedback about the outcome ment data ([9]). Using this predicted return time, we can au-
of actions and provide live recommendations of alternatives. tomatically control the thermostat as described above. The
Integrating all this literature, this paper introduces a mo- location information is not only used for predicting a user’s
bile application designed to give users feedback about their return time, but also to calculate how much power was con-
past behavior, provide timely recommendations to promote sumed by heating/cooling devices during the time the user
behavior change related to temperature regulation power is not at home and while he is at home.
consumption, and to support users in the achievement of In addition to location information we also collect inside,
the long-term goal of consuming less power in temperature outside, and the thermostat’s temperature setting for the
regulation while they are not at home. The application we user’s apartment. This information is used to provide feed-
developed allows users to remotely and conveniently control back on the user’s behavior and also to give recommenda-
the thermostat in their apartment using their phone. We tions on how to improve an environmentally negative be-
believe that the system can be deployed most eﬀectively in havior. To understand a user’s reasoning for changing the
the motivations stages of Preparation, Action, and Main- thermostat’s set temperature, we also query the user imme-
tenance identified in the Transtheoretical model described diately after a manual change to a higher temperature has
above. The remainder of the paper provides a description occurred.
of the application and outlines the structure of a study that The system was based on a commercial home automation
we intend to run as the next stage of our work. system from Insteon [6] and a custom mobile phone appli-
cation written on Google Android. Logically it consists of
2. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION three main parts: the home automation system, the mobile
phone, and a central server. The following two sections will
We designed a system to help people reduce power con-
give a short description of the home automation system and
sumption resulting from domestic heating and cooling de-
then describe the mobile phone application.
vices. It informs the user about his behavior by giving an
overview over past consumption in the form of a graph.
Studies have shown [1] that providing the user with tai- 2.1 Home Automation System
lored information about their consumption can result in re- Home automation - the use of small modules to extend ap-
duced energy consumption. Through timely recommenda- pliances with remote control and automation features - is a
tions on how to save energy, the system aims to help the commercially available technology. The Insteon system used
user’s decision-making process to behave more environmen- in this work allows the remote regulation of home tempera-
tally sustainably. In order to further motivate the user, he is ture and also provides support for the calculation of power
given a savings goal and the application indicates how well consumption. Calculating the power consumption of heat-
ing or cooling devices (e.g., furnaces or air conditioner) is a
complex problem, because it not only depends on the length
of time a device is active, but also on a set of complex vari-
ables including: the eﬃciency of the heating/cooling device,
the volume of the home space, the current inside and out-
side temperature, the thickness and material of the walls,
the number of walls exposed to outside conditions, and the
number and kind of windows in the walls, to name a few
issues. Because measuring these data is challenging for in-
dividual users the system presented in this paper used a
simplified set of calculations using an equation provided by
the U.S. Department of Energy:

hdd
AHC(city) = Cadj ∗ ( hddcity
us
) ∗ (1 + S ∗ (TwAvg − Ttyp ))

Legend:
Figure 1: Screenshot of Graph Overview Screen.
AHC(city) = Annual Heating Costs for city
Cadj = Adjusted consumption
(gas furnace) in mBTU concerns are often raised with novel technology incorporat-
hddcity/us = Average number of Heating Degree Days ing automation or context sensing control and can result in
S = Savings per degree users developing negative opinions about the systems. By
of setback temperature in percent providing a manual override, the system presented in this
TwAvg = Set temperature as weighted average paper hopes to avoid this problem. In addition to remote
Ttyp = Typical indoor temperature control we also ask the user why he increased the tempera-
during heating season ture in the apartment, because we also strive to understand
a user’s reasoning it.

This equation assumes standard values for some of these
2.4 Graph Overview
variables and uses diﬀerences between inside and outside The graph overview is one of the core feedback mecha-
temperature and the number of hours the user was at home nisms in the application. As illustrated in Figure 1, it
and away from home to calculate the power consumption. oﬀers users a consumption overview split into daily, weekly,
We believe the results of this calculation to be suﬃciently and monthly activity. Each sub-graph includes a goal line
indicative of real consumption to serve as eﬀective feedback. highlighting the diﬀerence between intended and achieved
levels of consumption. This is highlighted using a simple
2.2 Mobile Phone Application red, yellow, and green color scheme. This visualization is
The mobile phone application was developed and deployed designed so that users can see at a glance their performance
on T-Mobile G1 phones running Google Android. It consists over days, weeks and months. By including these longer pe-
of several components and is the core of the system described riods of time, the system aims to convey a sense of mounting
in this paper. Its key function is to collect and transmit its achievement and provide motivation to continue with and/or
current location to a central server in real time and support improve sustainable behaviors. In order to further support
the motivational techniques described in the beginning of this and provide positive reinforcement, a small smiley face
this chapter. Using the transmitted location it enables us to is shown if users achieve green behavior for more than half
estimate whether or not a user is at home, or whether they of the days in a particular week or month. As described in
are likely to return home in the near future. Furthermore we [4], individuals profit from positive reinforcement of their ac-
are able to calculate the power consumption while the user tions, which gives them a feeling of success and competence.
is at home or out and about in the world. The application The graph system is designed to provide such feedback.
provides an interface composed of three main components:
a temperature control screen which allows remote control 2.5 Recommendations
over the home automation system, a graph overview showing The recommendations screen aims to provide recommen-
past behavior, and a recommendation screen. Each of these dations to users on how to achieve consumption goals through
components is introduced in the following subsections. behaving sustainably. Once again, to present a clear visual
representation we adopted a simple red, yellow and green
2.3 Temperature Control color scheme for this UI. The user is shown a green screen
This interface component allows users to view and con- when he behaves sustainably the previous day, by turning
trol the current temperature in their homes. This feature down the temperature while away from home to at least 60°F
was intended to support error recovery (for instance, by al- and turning down the temperature to 65°F while at home.
lowing correction after forgetting to adjust the temperature If the user sets a higher temperature while at home, he is
settings prior to leaving home) but also to provide a sense shown a yellow screen. If the temperature is consistently
of security and control - to reassure users that they remain high throughout the day, the system will show him a red
in control of the system even though it incorporates signifi- screen. For the yellow and red screen we give the user a rec-
cant automated elements. Such privacy and lack of control ommendation on how to achieve sustainable behavior, which
is in essence an explanation about why his behavior was not give the user information about his environmental behavior
sustainable. We also suggest wearing additional clothing to and recommend actions to change environmentally bad be-
compensate for cool temperatures at home. havior, we measure the locus-of-control and self-eﬃcacy of
In addition to recommendations and behavior indications a user at the beginning, middle, and end of the study. This
we also inform users about the environmental impact of the information will tell us if there was a change, for exam-
wasteful behavior of leaving temperature regulation systems ple, from external locus-of-control, the state where outside
active in empty homes. This is done simply by calculating sources influence events happening in our life’s, to inter-
and presenting the number of 60W light bulbs that could nal locus-of-control, the state where the user himself aﬀects
have be powered by the wasted energy. events. Measuring self-eﬃcacy will tell us if our system had
The recommendations screen is the first screen shown to a self-empowering eﬀect on users, where they increasingly
the user upon application startup. Every morning the phone got confident to influence their environmental behavior.
notifies the user about the previous days consumption data
by flashing the onboard LED and vibrating. The goal of this 4. SUMMARY
feedback is to provide positive reinforcement for sustainable
In this paper we first gave an introduction into the prob-
behavior and to inform users about the impact of their be-
lem space of home power consumption and explained some
havior on the environment. In this way, we hope to pro-
of the problems with the current use of thermostats. Addi-
vide an incentive for users to alter unsustainable behaviors.
tionally we highlight how research results from psychology
Our application informs users about problematic behaviors,
can help to influence a user’s behavior and reduce power
highlights the impact of these behaviors, and gives specific
consumption resulting from heating/cooling devices.
recommendations on how to enact change. By showing this
We then described a working prototype of a mobile appli-
information in the mornings, prior to regular departures to
cation designed to influence a user’s sustainable practices.
work, we hope to be able influence the user’s behavior in
Our prototype allows remote control and automated con-
a timely and appropriate fashion. Studies have shown [2]
trol over the thermostat, gives the user a goal to achieve,
that frequently updated feedbacks with multiple feedback
provides daily feedback on how well this goal was met, rec-
options such as comparisons of several days or providing ad-
ommendations to achieve the goal (or positive reinforcement
ditional information sources like recommendations are most
in case the goal met), and an overview over past consump-
eﬀective.
tion behavior. Our immediate next work is to conduct a
study of this prototype with 20 people in the fall.
3. STUDY DESCRIPTION
In order to test the system and evaluate whether or not 5. REFERENCES
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