CS7680 Topics in Computer Systems
Spring 2011
Mobile Persuasion: Designing Mobile Phone Persuasive Technology for Health and Wellness
SYLLABUS
| Instructor: | Stephen Intille, Ph.D. (see website for contact information) |
| Units: | (Grad), Advanced undergraduates welcome |
| Meeting Time: | Thu 6-9 |
| Meeting Places: | Dodge Hall 130 |
Goals Prerequisites Format and Requirements Project and Paper Schedule Grading Late Policy Academic Integrity Office Hours
This project-oriented, graduate seminar course examines the principles of persuasive technology, with an emphasis on human-computer interaction and the development of novel mobile technologies for health and wellness. Topics include an overview of persuasive technology; an overview of theories of behavior change as applied to design of human-computer interfaces on mobile devices; the principles, guidelines, and specification languages for designing good user interfaces for mobile phones; applications of mobile technology in health and wellness research; ethics of persuasive technology; and review of recent research on the use of phones, text messaging, and social networking for novel health applications. Course work will include project conception, design, implementation, and pilot testing of persuasive mobile phone software applications. Students with health sciences backgrounds will write papers, and students with computer science backgrounds will implement software. All students will work together in transdisciplinary teams to design and evaluate novel applications. These applications will be used in actual clinical trials after the course is complete. The course is intended to facilitate collaboration between students with diverse backgrounds such as computer science, health sciences, engineering, psychology, and business.
This course is strongly multi-disciplinary. The primary prerequisite is an interest in designing, creating, and evaluating mobile phone apps that are persuasive technologies that help people achieve desired behavior changes. Such a technology might help people with health-related behavior changes, such as weight loss, medication adherence, staying socially connected, aging in place in the home, good dietary decision making, physical activity adoption, and more. Similar theories and approaches can be applied to develop mobile phone software that helps people save energy, improve personal safety, or offset other persuasive forces one is exposed to each day.
Students in the course should have either (1) solid Java or C# programming skills or (2) a prior course in the College of Health Sciences with a significant component focused on health behavior change.
The course has been designed for graduate students but advanced undergraduate students are welcome.
Format and Requirements
Most classes will consist of a short lecture followed by discussion of the assigned readings followed by student presentations on recent research papers in mobile interface design and mobile persuasive technologies. Some classes will be devoted to project planning and pilot testing using low-fidelity prototyping. Weekly readings consist of selections from two texts and published research papers.
Course requirements include (1) readings for class preparation and class participation including short in-class quizzes, (2) in-class presentations of one or more research papers and leading of class discussion of those papers (3) short individual brainstorming and design exercises in the first part of the course, and (4) the final project and paper (described below).
Students with health sciences backgrounds will write conference-quality papers as part of the final projects. Students with computer science backgrounds will implement software. All students will participate on teams to implement a mobile phone app to motivate health-related behavior change.
Class time will not be spent on learning Android programming, although some time will be spent describing the systems to be used in the class projects. Each week an additional, optional "Android hack fest" will be scheduled for interested students to help with Android development.
Project (Functional System and Theoretical Justification Paper)
Although there are some small assignments along the way, this is primarily a project-based course. In small teams of approximately 3-4 people, students will:
- design and implement a fully-functional mobile phone application for Android mobile phones.
- write a conference-quality paper that clearly and concisely describes (1) the problem the application is intended to help address, (2) the theoretical justification for the application design, (3) the design and features of the application, and (4) suggestions for how the application might be evaluated.
Teams will have one of two project options:
Option 1: Design a persuasive mobile application that assists with some aspect of long-term weight loss. The team's application will plug into an existing application being tested in a 2-year randomized clinical trial with overweight and obese 18-35 year olds being conducted by researchers at Northeastern, Duke Medical, and MIT. Applications that are sufficiently robust and well-grounded in theory will be incorporated into the actual study after the class, providing additional research opportunities for interested students.
Option 2: Design a persuasive mobile application that either motivates some form of physical activity or discourages sedentary behavior using multiple miniature wireless accelerometers that send limb motion data to the phone and detect type, duration, and intensity of physical activity (see the Wockets project). Teams who build convincing, well-justified prototypes may have the opportunity to have their device tested in a study to take place after the conclusion of the course (with researchers from Stanford Medical, Northeastern, and MIT). plug into an existing application being tested in a 2-year randomized clinical trial with overweight and obese 18-35 year olds being conducted by researchers at Northeastern, Duke Medical, and MIT.
Teams are expected to produce a 6-8 page conference-quality paper submission in CHI format describing the problem addressed by the design, the theoretical motivations, what was learned during the design process, and the operation of the technology or the experimental methods used to test the intervention. Quality writing is a requirement of this course. Teams are also expected to produce a fully-functional mobile phone application that is robust and meets user interface design standards discussed in the course.
Android phones will be provided for development and testing as needed. Teams using the Wockets motion sensors will be provided with those as well.
This course has a moderate but steady weekly reading load. The selected readings will be the focus of class discussions and a short (easy-if-you've-done-the-reading) quiz at the start of each class. The readings will either be available for download off the web or provided in hardcopy Two short books will be assigned in their entirety:
Fogg, B.J., Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.
[$23.71 at Amazon]Cialdini, R., Influence: Science and Practice (5th Edition).
[$14.68 at Amazon]
A recommended but not required purchase is:
Jones, M. and Marsden, Mobile Interaction Design.
[$54.11 at Amazon]
(Tentative) Schedule
IMPORTANT NOTE: The reading list is still tentative. Final readings will be added based on the distribution/interests of students in the first class. Each class starting on January 20, will also include a student presentation on a paper and a student presentation/critique on a mobile persuasive app.
Thu Jan 13: Introduction to the course
Welcome; Overview of course and project; What is persuasion?; What you will learn in this course; Expectations and possibilities for the final project and paper.
Assignments:
Introduction and interests email
Mobile app compare and contrast
Read chapters from Cialdini, FoggThu Jan 20: The study of persuasive technologies; examples
What are the basics of the science of persuasion and behavior change? What examples exist today of computational systems that explicitly attempt to persuade? What is captology? Why do computers that use emerging sensing technology have significant persuasive potential?Assignments:
Observation exercise
Rapid design 1: motivating flossing
Project ideas
Read remaining chapters from Cialdini, FoggThu Jan 27: Observation strategies and rapid, low-fidelity prototyping
What are some new UI challenges when creating persuasive technologies? How can observation strategies help design better interfaces? What are some practical techniques to help improve interface design?
In class project idea presentations and critiques
Assignments:
Form teams
Selected readings on mobile interaction design
Rapid design 2: Sensor-based mobile apps for motivating weight lossThu Feb 3: In-Class prototyping exercise / Mobile interaction design
What makes a good mobile user interface and how does it differ from other user interfaces? Are there useful design guidelines one might follow?
Assignments:
Selected readings on persuasion
Rapid design 3 (team): Sensor-based mobile apps for discouraging sedentary behaviorThu Feb 10: Theory overview / "just-in-time" prompts
What is known about human behavior and persuasion? What are some of the established theories about ways to influence people that have been studied by researchers from social psychologists to advertisers? Many successful behavior change devices operate by providing people with "just-in-time" information at points of decision, behavior, or consequences.
In class presentation of rapid design 3
Assignments:
Readings on conditioned reinforcement learning
Team project proposal ideaThu Feb 17: Motivation, conditioning, and behavior shaping / Sustaining behavior change
What can be learned from animal trainers about the power of positive reinforcement and stimulus response training? What are the stages individuals go through when changing behavior and how can knowledge of these stages be exploited by behavior change interfaces to not only create but to sustain behavior change?
Assignments:
Team project design/plan presentation with milestonesThu Feb 24: Motivation via fun: strategies for learning via fun and exploration / Establishing credibility
How can a behavior change device exploit the power of fun and curiosity for educational learning? What does it take to assert credibility and how does it impact persuasive ability?
Team project idea presentations
Assignments:
Selected reading on game design
Respond to team project critiques
Paper outlineThu Mar 3: No class (vacation week)
Thu Mar 10: More on mobile development
Additional mobile development user interface design strategies. What does research tell us about how people use phones, enter data efficiently, and perform other mobile tasks?
Assignment:
Selected readings on mobile activity detection technology
Work on projectThu Mar 17: Sensor-enabled mobile app design
How are researchers and developers using sensors in the mobile phones such as cameras, microphones, RFID readers, accelerometers, and other to create new mobile interactive experiences? How do these applications detect "context" and what is it good for?
Assignment:
Work on project and paperThu Mar 24: Final design presentation and preliminary demonstration
Short presentations of revised project ideas with live naive user demo followed by questions/critique and discussion. Paper draft due.
Phone swap to test applications with other class participants for one week.Assignment:
Critique the app you were given
Selected readings on evaluationThu Mar 31: Evaluation of persuasive technologies
How might one evaluate a persuasive mobile technology? What are some examples of small and large-scale research studies? How do the constraints of evaluation impact the design of such technologies? What tools are needed to measure behavior? What did you learn from testing another group's technology?
Assignment:
Selected readings on ethics of computers motivating behavior change and subliminal persuasionThu Apr 7: Ethics of persuasive technologies / Subliminal persuasion
When does a persuasive technology become an unethical technology? Does subliminal persuasion exist? How can technology be used to create near-subliminal persuasion?
Assignment:
Selected readings for guest lectureThu Apr 14: Guest lecture
TBD
Assignment:
Final testing of final project technology and proofing of final paperThu Apr 21: FINAL PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
Persuasive presentations and pizza.
Prior experience suggests that work in this course will generally fall into one of four categories:
- Superior, striking, or unexpected pieces of work with excellent effort demonstrating a mastery of the subject matter and a skillful use of concepts and/or materials discussed in class; work robustly and fully implemented; work that shows exceptional imagination, elegance of presentation, originality, creativity, and effort.
- Good work demonstrating a capacity to use the subject matter and the ability to handle problems encountered in the course.
- Work that is adequate but that would benefit from increased effort or preparation.
- Work that is minimally acceptable demonstrating serious deficiencies.
Course work falling into these categories correspond roughly to A, B, C, and D grades. The final grade for the course will be computed by weighting the results from each assignment according to the following formula:
- Final project technology OR final project research paper, depending on student background (50%).
- Overall quality/innovation/design of project idea (20%)
- Brainstorming assignments (10%)
- Class presentation (10%)
- Quick quizzes on reading (10%)
- Class preparation, participation, and attendance (borderline and +/- consideration)
The course is not graded on a curve, but based on past experience with interface design courses grades in this class are likely to range from A to C.
Late assignments will be reduced by the equivalent of one letter grade each late day.
All students are expected and encouraged to discuss the topics raised by this course with each other. Ideas incorporated from an outside source or another student must be documented appropriately in write-ups or presentations. Students must abide by the NU Academic Integrity Policy. Acts of academic dishonesty will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution.
Students are encouraged to use office hours to discuss the assignments and/or course topics. Hours TBD or by appointment (617-232-5755, ...@neu.edu) at 450 WVH.
TRACE
All students are encouraged to use the TRACE (Teacher Rating and Course Evaluation) system to evaluate this course and to help the instructor make it better for future students.