Persuasive Technology: Development and implementation of personalized technologies to change attitudes and behaviours (original) (raw)

Persuasive Technology (PT) is an emerging, interdisciplinary research field, focusing on the design, development and evaluation of technologies aimed at creating awareness and inducing behavior change with the ultimate goal to increase wellbeing and quality of life. Academic researchers, designers, and practitioners from the social sciences and technological disciplines, as well as from the fields of health, healthcare, safety, sustainability, and ICT have developed this field in the preceding years, giving rise to a community which aims to 'persuade' people into adopting healthier lifestyles, behave more safely, and reduce consumption of renewable resources, to name a few examples. The 'technology' component in PT reflects usage of, amongst others, big data analytics, sensor technology for monitoring, personalized feedback and coaching, mHealth, data visualization techniques, serious gaming, and social media. Columbus, Copenhagen, Claremont, Oulu, Palo Alto, and Eindhoven, this time the picturesque city of Amsterdam was the place to be. For this conference, the special theme was "smart monitoring and persuasive coaching; building bridges between persuasion and personalized healthcare via real-time data collection and smart, empathic, user-adaptive engaging technology". Although still emerging and expanding (in parallel with the latest and upcoming technological developments and the opportunities they provide for managing behavior change), we feel that the field of Persuasive Technology is reaching maturity as indicated by the continuing increase in papers submitted to PT conferences along the years, a trend we believe will persist in the years to come as opportunities for technology-induced behavior change will steadily (or perhaps rather 'exponentially') continue to grow. Importantly however, our community is not defined and shaped merely from a technological point of view. That is, throughout the years, equal emphasis has been placed on gathering insights and a deeper understanding of the user involved and his or her needs, skills, and (cognitive) capabilities. Obviously, this is for a good reason, as any attempt at behavior change should be driven by a comprehensive understanding of the goals and needs of the people involved. From our point of view, a contribution to our field should thus have both technology and people at its core, something which is also reflected by the University of Twente's 'HI TECH, HUMAN TOUCH' philosophy. Taking note of these 'requirements', we are proud to say that the contributions to this conference (comprising papers, posters, demos, workshops, and contributions to symposia and doctoral colloquia) deliver and live up to the promise of connecting people and technology in order to enhance the quality of our life. In this volume of adjunct proceedings, we present the posters abstracts, demos, symposia, doctoral consortium papers, workshop proposals, and tutorial contributions. Ranging from linkages between gamification and heathy habits, design strategies for creating awareness and persistence, to big data analytics aimed at uncovering 'hidden' behavior patterns, the work presented here will inspire, educate, and motivate its reader and attract new contributors to our field. After all, in a world where augmented reality, the internet of things, and robotics have just seen the light of day, certainly the best is yet to come. We would like to thank all authors for their high-quality contributions which not only provide a comprehensive overview of our discipline and its landmarks so far, but also provide a sketch of the shape of things to come. Just as our discipline involves a dialogue between people and technology, the contributions you will find here involve a dialogue between authors and reviewers. Thanks to all reviewers for their valuable feedback, ideas and suggestions. Finally, thanks to our colleagues and students involved in the overall organization, the workshops, tutorials, doctoral consortium, posters, demos, symposia, and the conference itself. None of this would have been possible without your support, trust and dedication.