Persuasive Design in HCI

Fall 2017. Instructors: Geoff Kaufman and Joselyn McDonald

Bettina Chou
Aug 29, 2017 · 14 min read

Class/reading notes and reflections

8.29.17 | Introduction and Class Overview

Mostly going over kinds of topics we’ll go over in class


8.31 | Embedded Design Approach to Game Design and Evaluation

Embedded— not being overly didactic/obvious with interventions

  • Often our judgments of perception are influenced by factors outside our awareness. ex: holding warm/cold water and then how you perceive a person’s warmth

Question: ^ how would something like this be measured?

  • Social proof/de-individuation when in a crowd; especially when you’re not identifiable (wearing a uniform)

Idea: every time Geoff has a mental choice, he imagines something/someone that gives him guilt that persuades him to act in the way he thinks is better but doesn’t want to.


9.1 | Reading: Game Design Persuasion

Psychologically “embedded” approach to designing games for prosocial causes

Introduction

  • When the intentions are too obvious, it triggers players’ psychological defenses or reduces players potential engagement/enjoyment of game
  1. Reinforce stereotypes. Ex: Overcompensating for lack of representation isn’t very effective. Over-representation of girls in computer science has negative effects. Makes them more aware of their gender or see how different they are from the role models

Embedded Design Approach

Think about that “no drunk driving” talk we had senior year of high school where instead of the typical people preaching to us about the negativities of drunk driving, it was just a one man show about how lives intermingle with another, making us aware of how our actions may have consequences we don’t notice.

Strategy 1: Embedding with Intermixing

  • Focal with non-focal content that “distracts” attention from game’s persuasive goals or makes persuasive content more approachable

Strategy 2: Embedding through obfuscating

  • Could use genres that are approachable/removed from didactic nature of content (ex: party games)

Strategy 3: Distancing

  • Offer a safe space/buffer between players and serious/uncomfortable themes often by using analogy/metaphor. (ex: talking about vaccination/disease by calling it “ZOMBIEPOX”)

9.5 | Embedded Design

Reviewing embedded design paper and discussing strengths and weaknesses of existing educational games regarding bias

Example of what NOT to do
uses intermixing, bias teaching intentions are masked

Awkward Moment on Amazon!

uses obfuscationg. came from definition of buffalo: “to outwit or puzzle”. bias teaching intentions are masked
originally intended to garner anti-capitalistic sentiments

Reading: Psychology of Self and Change

How our self views can be either barriers or catalysts to change

Reflection

screenshot of what I posted on our class discussion board

9.7 | Class: Self-Concept

self-concept

  • the sum total of knowledge/beliefs we have about our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, abilities, traits, etc.

Culture affects variation in self-schema

  • Ex: individualism vs collectivism in Western and Eastern ideologies

2 Key Questions

  1. What are the sources of self-knowledge?
  • Comparisons to other people/the environment (those people also integrated into self-concept)

2. How accurate does self-knowledge tend to be?

  • Not always accurate, since some people may look for best or worse aspects of self (fun fact: people who are depressed tend to have more accurate self-concepts lol)

Introspection

  • Studies found that < 8% of randomly sampled daily thoughts are about the self. In fact, people think that self-thought is unpleasant

Fun fact! Geoff is working on a research topic analyzing social media activity (ex: Tumblr) affecting identity development of pre-teens/teenagers (oh my lol)

  • We tend to overestimate our change from past — present, and underestimate how much we will change present — future

Affective Forecasting

  • We’re not very good at predicting our emotions either

Other Biases

Interesting how even though we tend to not think about ourselves, we think others think a lot about ourselves

  • Illusion of Transparency: we overestimate how much people can tell if we’re lying or trying to conceal an emotional/physical reaction

Largely because you’re so inexperienced that you don’t have adequate gauge of competency.


9.10 | Reading: Nudges

  • Nudge: persuasion tactics that assume and target people’s 1)propensity to choose options that demand the least (physical or intellectual) effort (i.e., the path of least resistance) 2 propensity to conform or succumb to prevailing group norms and peer pressure 3) eagerness to identify with peer groups or valued groups that provide them with positive self-esteem.

Reflection

quick notes on reactions to this piece

The definition of “nudge” tactics looks down on humans, targeting their propensities. It seems to backfire when the targeted people are aware of the condescending tone and complain. However, since it’s not inherently malicious, I find the ethics of “nudge” tactics to be a difficult area to navigate. I’m reminded of two similar persuasive techniques I’ve learned: dark patterns and “facilitation”, or as professor Dan Lockton describes, “understanding what people are doing, and helping them do it differently”.

Dark patterns in UX are designs meant to trick people into an action that benefits the company, often at the cost of the user. For instance, sign up or purchase buttons for ads may be placed in more convenient locations/more conspicuous, causing someone to easily press it by accident. By definition, dark patterns are questionable. In contrast, ethics in the redirection in Lockton’s description depends on the particular person’s values. Ultimately, this paper asserts that best way to be ethical is to ensure those in the decision making power are aware that even their decisions may not be the best, to bring some humility in their decisions and cause them to reflect more.


9.19 | Class: Online Social Identities and Dual Process Theories

There are two processes that happen for any kind of cognitive task: “system 1 and system 2” or “fast and slow”

This has 5,000 ‘likes’ so it must be funny

  1. system 1: fast, unconscious, automatic, every day decisions, error prone

2. system 2: slow, conscious, effortful, complex decisions, reliable

Thought suppression is ineffective way of tackling biases. “Don’t say [this]” makes you think of it more easily


9.21 | Class: Attitude

Triparte Model

  • Affect: emotional responses to the attitude object. Sometimes people use only positive or negative emotions to represent overall attitude on something. (Ex: The people I dislike, I dislike because I focus on the negative emotional responses with that person)

None of these are mutually exclusive, there’s always an overlap (think my questions about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation). Eating a burrito could make you happy (affect) and then you’re always eating them (behavior) but you’ve heard about health violations (cognition) so overall you like chipotle burritos quite a bit!

Persuasion is, by definition, manipulative because we’re trying to change one of those elements above.

Key Factors of Communication

“Why says what in which channel to whome with what effect?

  • Who: the source

System 1

peripheral route. occurs when you need to elaborate less, focus on cues or heuristics. on spur of moment, leads to less stable, shorter-lived attitude change

System 2

central route. engaging people with deep process of thought, focus on strength of a message’s argument. leads to more stable, long-lasting attitude change.

Viable course project: what are ways of priming a more system 2 processes How do people switch between these two systems? → Elaboration will be highest when both motivation and ability are high.

  • Examples of ability factors: distraction, fatigue, knowledge, intelligence, etc.

Resistance Mechanisms

  • Forewarning: giving advance notice about persuasive attempt to invite them to generate counterarguments

Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?

<look through these slides for tuesday>


9.26 | Persuasion via Conformity and Compliance

Behavioral attitude + subjective norms + perceived behavioral control → intention → behavior

Thought: this class is more about forms of persuasive communication design/information design. How does persuasive interaction or product design manifest?

  • Attitudes can predict spontaneous behaviors

9.28 | Compliance

6 well known norms that can be exploited to gain compliance: reciprocity, social proof, consistency, liking, authority, scarcity

  1. Reciprocity: one way to do it is “pre-favor”; giving a gift first to invite giving back. Another method is called “door-in-the-face” where you first ask an outrageous request and then say what you actually wanted. People feel obligated to concede and also compromise to the second request
  • Perspective of target: being aware is the first defense; approach decisions mindfully

10.3 | Cognitive Dissonance

  • Hypocrisy is a challenge to one’s self concept and so individuals are prompted to change behaviors (or twist justifications) to defend it.

I’m having trouble placing the context of these persuasive techniques in design: the topics we’ve covered seem to be more information design/communication design related, which is only a part of behavior change. How can concepts of persuasion be embedded into interactions, systems/experiences, or products?

  • These persuasion techniques also seem to be more helpful in getting people motivated or encouraging them to continue a certain behavior rather than providing the tools/environment to actually do something.

10.5 | Priming and Framing

What can be primed?

  1. Emotional states

How do we prime?

  1. Subliminal priming (below the level of consciousness)
  • Priming stereotypes causes people to more likely adhere to stereotypes traits. (Ex: reminding women of their gender when taking a math/science related assessment)

5 Fundamental Domains of Human Morality

  1. harm/care (concerns about the caring for and protection of other people)
  • Liberals tend to focus more on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity whereas conservatives focus more on authority/respect.

10.10 | Embodied Cognition and “Stealth” Interventions

Reading Notes

  • Psychologists theorize that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are grounded in bodily interactions with the environment. EX: does the weight of a recruiter’s clipboard affect their opinion of a candidate?

Below are examples of other topics and their respective metaphors

  • Understanding how people think of concepts as metaphors could make designed experiences more compelling. EX: we see knowledge as growth, so the Forest app grows a virtual tree as you stay away from your phone, as if mirroring the growth of your own knowledge.

10.17 | What is Design? — Joselyn Lecture

Design: moving from current to where we want to be

Stemmed from Herbert Simon

everyone who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones

Push back: in moving design into the academic sphere makes it seem design can only be done by people who have formally trained in design.

Auto-ethnography (self-reflection)

What is the problem you’re addressing? Reducing screen time and reliance on technology from a mental and physical health perspective. Our reliance on technology saps our attention, taking away from physical activity, time outdoors, and face to face socialization even when people are easily accessible. We’ve also developed unhealthy posture as a result of how we use our technology. From a mental health perspective, viewing the world from a funnel distorts the information we receive, causing us to make incomplete conclusions and/or affecting our self-esteem.

Who is impacted? What is the realm? While everyone is impacted, for the sake of practicality we’ve decided to narrow our scope to college students and teachers.

Why do you care and why do you think there should be an intervention? Why isn’t the current state acceptable? I’ve personally sat through an hour of internet only to feel disgusted at how sedentary I was. I’m also frustrated with the lack of trust on social media, as well as how people rely on their phones even in moments of nothing-ness (a lull in a conversation, standing in an elevator). Not only is “being bored” recuperating, but it sends the message that other things are more important right now.

What do you think the preferred state is? Instead of omitting technology, we should instill more self-control in how much we use technology, and our care for things in the 3 dimensions.

Various Design Methods

  • Leaving interviews until later because often we might bias the research with the questions we ask

10.26 | Goal Pursuit and Habit Formation

  • Goals: the way we represent a desired end-point. Serve as focal-points.

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Bettina Chou

Written by

CMU School of Design. Process documentation and reflections for work in and out of the classroom. Spring 2016–present. Portfolio at Bettinayc.com

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