Rationale Behind Socially Influencing Design Choices for Health Behavior Change

Abstract

Abstract. Persuasive technologies for health behavior change often include social influence features. Social influence in the design of persuasive technology has been described as a black box. This case study sheds light on design practices by identifying factors that affect the design of social influence features in health behavior change applications and the designers' understanding of the social influence aspects. Our findings are twofold: First, the two most positively inclined social influence features, namely cooperation and normative influence, were missing from the reviewed applications. Second, the medical condition -the persuasive technology targets -has a major influence on consideration and integration of social influence features in health behavior change applications. Our findings should be taken into account when frameworks and guidelines are created for the design of social influence features in health behavior change applications.

Social Influence Scale for Technology Design and Transformation

“…The SIS framework has been applied to studies on design choices for health behavior change [32], persuasive strategies to encourage low-energy mobility [53], cocreation for living mobility [5], digital games for social persuasion to prevent speeding [28], and persuasive practices for home security advisory services [16]. It has also been used by Myneni and Iyengar [33] to study health promotion technology, Wais-Zechmann et al [50] on investigating the personalized strategies, and Hamari et al [20] for gamification.…”

Developing a Smartphone Application to Support Smoking Behavior Change through Social Comparison

“…However, the different interconnected aspects of social influence (e.g. social comparison) [8] remain unaddressed most of the times in the designs [9]. Social comparison theory states that, in lack of objective measurements, people compare themselves to others for self-evaluation [10].…”