Reducing temporal tensions as a strategy to promote sustainable behaviours

Abstract

This research proposes that it is possible to deliberately reduce temporal tensions in order to promote energy saving behaviours. People may not dedicate enough time to planning their tasks that consume energy, rushing into them without much deliberation. They may also use more energy than necessary in an attempt to accelerate processes that seem to be taking too long, to reduce the boredom of waiting. Persuasive technology provided the tools to manipulate the perception of time and therefore elicit changes in the specific behaviours that result in unnecessary energy usage. Cooking tasks were used as the scenario to test behaviour change strategies delivered via a smartphone application. Results showed that these strategies facilitated the performance of sustainable behaviours. Participants reported that the app made (1) them more likely to follow the steps needed to use less energy, (2) the activity more enjoyable and (3) the time appear to pass more quickly compared to a control version.

Evaluating How Interfaces Influence the User Interaction with Fully Autonomous Vehicles

“…Participants also mentioned that they wanted to have their phones free for other activities. This finding is in accordance with previous literature, which describes that personal devices are regularly used to pass the time when using public transport [38] and smartphone applications are capable of making waiting times seem shorter [50]. One interesting result was that the mobile phone without a secondary information screen was found to be more useful than with a secondary information screen.…”

A new perspective on personas and customer journey maps: Proposing systemic UX

“…Travel time can be a gift to the individual traveller, who often is immersed in their own activities during journeys to pass the time (Lyons et al, 2016;Oliveira et al, 2016).…”

Analysing passengers’ behaviours when boarding trains to improve rail infrastructure and technology

“…In recent years, real time information has become much more widely used in public transport systems [42], and is a frequent demand from passengers [43]. Smartphones can be used as platform for delivering information and motivating users to change behaviours [44]. Technology can be employed in order to indicate where the train will come to a halt in the station, so passengers would know the area of the platform covered by the train.…”