Positive Technology Journal

I stumbled over this site today: Do Nothing for 2 minutes.

The site presents the user with a very simple challenge: can you keep yourself from touching your computer for two minutes?

When the user enters the site a serene ocean view and the sound of waves displayed. The instructions ask to sit back and relax without touching your mouse or keyboard, and then a two minute timer begins counting down. If the user touches the mouse or the keyboard, a FAIL message appears, and the clock reset itself.

The site is very simple, but is gaining a lot of attention worldwide. In spite of its simplicity, I think that it includes interesting features: the provision of relaxing content “on demand”, the countdown, the feedback about compliance with task's instructions.

If any of you knows similar websites please post them in the comments!

Via Textually.org [via Reuters]

Colorado's STEPP and Denver-based ad agency Cactus developed a message system on cell phones with an Internet quit program.

Initially aimed at high school students in Colorado, the state hopes to soon share its fledgling FixNixer program as a technique for all age groups and geographies.

QuitNet.com, one of the most established Web sites for quitting, is also considering more tailored messages to users of its site and a foray into mobile, while quit support groups are popping up on social networks MySpace and Facebook.

A good reading on mobile persuasion - Edited by BJ Fogg and Dean Eckles

 For more info, see www.mobilepersuasion.com

From UsabilityNews 

Event Date: 26 April 2007 to 26 April 2007

Using Eyetracking to Optimise Persuasion-Centered Design: Rob Stevens, Bunnyfoot

Persuasion-Centered Design (PCD) utilises behavioural segmentation to plan different user journeys for different personality types. For example, competitive consumers receive less detailed information than methodical consumers. PCD facilitates consumers in self-selecting their behavioural type by utilizing descriptive in line links. By eyetracking consumers we can see if they engage with a link and choose not to select it. With PCD this outcome is often a planned for event, one that would be impossible to reliably measure without eyetracking.

Via Korea Times

Xtive, a Korean venture start-up, has developed a subliminal sound sequence, which it claims can prevent obsessive use of online games, thus giving hope to game addicts, reports The Korea Times. 
 

From the Korea Times interview: 

``We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The messages are told 10,000 to 20,000 times per second,’’ Xtive President Yun Yun-hae said.

``Game users can’t recognize the sounds. But their subconscious is aware of them and the chances are high they will quit playing,’’ the 35-year-old Yun said. ``Tests tell us the sounds work.’’

Xtive, which was established in 2005, spent about a year to create the sound sequence geared toward addressing the concern that Korean teenagers spend too much time playing computer games.

The addiction to the network games has turned into a serious social problem and some gamers have even died after long sessions in front of the computer.

Experts point out roughly 10 to 20 percent of high school students can be categorized as Web junkies who need treatment. And many believe that is a conservative perspective.

``Experiences tell us kids or adolescents simply don’t stop playing games when faced with forceful measures. Such attempts can also cause many side effects,’’ Yun said.

``But our newly developed sound sequence tells them to stop playing on their own. We think this can make a real difference in the war against obsessive game play,’’ he said.

Yun said Xtive plans to commercialize the phonogram along with the government and game companies.

``Game companies can install a system, which delivers the inaudible sounds after it recognizes a young user has kept playing after a preset period of time,’’ Yun said.

Xtive applied for a domestic patent for the phonogram and is looking to take advantage of the technology in other sectors.

``We can easily change the messages. In this sense, the potential for this technology is exponential,’’ Yun said.

Via Medgadget

The NTT DoCoMo breathalyzer phone sends a text message to your boss before you get behind the wheel of your company's bus or truck. 

Gizmodo report: 

KDDI Corp has developed a breathalyzer/cellphone combo that prevents inebriated taxi and bus drivers in Japan from getting behind the wheel. Companies that buy the phone will require their employees to blow into the breathalyzer before getting behind the wheel. The phone then measures how drunk (or sober) you are and sends the results to your company's computer along with a snapshot of the your mug and your location. If you've had too much sake, the phone will notify your boss who'll most likely fire your drunk ass. The phone and software cost a combined $1,250, which shouldn't be too much money for a big company to spend.

From usability news

You are invited to submit papers for PERSUASIVE 07 at Stanford University, April 27-28, 2007.

We welcome original papers based on empirical studies, theory, methods for research, and related ethical issues; and case studies of the highest quality.

Link to the conference website

Via Mindware Forum

DietMate is a hand-held computer that provides a program of weight loss, cholesterol reduction, and hypertension control. DietMate is made by Personal Improvement Computer Systems (PICS), which also makes two other tiny computerized mindgadgets: SleepKey Insomnia Treatment Hand-held Computer and the QuitKey Smoking Cessation Hand-Held Computer.

From the PICS website:

DietMate provides a sophisticated, yet easy to use, nutrition and exercise program that is tailored to each user's nutritional requirements, food preferences, and habits. By providing hundreds of nutritionally balanced menus which can be customized as desired, DietMate picks up where calorie counters leave off.

DietMate also tracks calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. It provides daily nutritional targets, charts progress and even creates a shopping list. DietMate has been proven effective in both weight and cholesterol reduction, in clinical studies funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

New Scientist has an interview with sociologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle about how "always-on" communication devices - i.e. instant messaging, Wi-Fi and cellphones - are changing the way people relate to each other.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

For some people, things move from "I have a feeling, I want to call a friend" to "I want to feel something, I need to make a call". In either case, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone and to manage and contain one's emotions. When technology brings us to the point where we're used to sharing our thoughts and feelings instantaneously, it can lead to a new dependence, sometimes to the extent that we need others in order to feel our feelings in the first place.

Our new intimacies with our machines create a world where it makes sense to speak of a new state of the self. When someone says "I am on my cell", "online", "on instant messaging" or "on the web", these phrases suggest a new placement of the subject, a subject wired into social existence through technology, a tethered self. I think of tethering as the way we connect to always-on communication devices and to the people and things we reach through them.

 

Continue to read the full interview

Via Mindware

QuitKey is a small portable device that promises to help quit smoking:

Via Medgadget 

According to a study conducted by Oregon Health & Science University researchers, continuous, unobtrusive monitoring of in-home activity may be a reliable way of assessing changes in motor behaviors that may occur along with changes in memory. The study was presented last week at the 10th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in Madrid.

From the university's press release:

Via Mind Hacks 

A team of three Italian researchers (Emanuele Olivetti, Diego Sona, and Sriharsha Veeramachaneni) won $10000 in a brain-activity interpretation competition. Entrants were provided with the fMRI data and behavioural reports recorded when four people watched two movies. The competitors' task was to create an algorithm that could use the viewers ongoing brain activity to predict what they were thinking and feeling as the film unfolded.

The Italian team resulted to be the most accurate, with a correlation of .86 for basic features, such as whether an instant of the film contained music. The full results are here.

Re-blogged from Smart Mobs

AsiaMedia reports "Japan's No. 2 telecom operator KDDI Corp said yesterday that it had developed a server which keeps an electronic record of the smallest events in a person's life and lets others sift through them.

The Lifelog Pod jots down every activity made through a cellphone or computer, including taking photographs, searching for a restaurant, listening to music and managing money. While some may loathe the thought of an omniscient network, the company said it could provide a way to make friends."

Users can learn who else their friends chat with or delve through their companions" data -- minus areas protected by passwords -- to gauge their interests," a KDDI spokesman said.

"Your information is connected to that of your friend, and that of his friend, and so on.

"In this country of cellphone aficionados, cellphone users can also put their blogs on the common server. Only people who have a common connection -- such as a mutual friend -- will be able to access each other's data.

"This isn't a violation of privacy rights," the KDDI official said. "It is simply that everyone is connected."

Japan: A mobile network that keeps track of everything you do

BJ Fogg's Persuasive Technology Lab (Stanford University) is sponsoring Mobile Persuasion 06, a one-day conference on how mobile technology can change people's beliefs and behaviors.

From the conference website:

Mobile Persuasion is for innovators, researchers, and companies creating mobile technologies that change people’s beliefs and behaviors. Applications include health, commerce, activism, social networking, addiction, advertising, gaming, and environmental conservation. This full-day event will feature expert presentations and panels on how mobile technology can change attitudes and behaviors.  

 

The event will take place November 10th at Stanford University. Free registration is available for a limited time.

BJ Fogg has posted to his blog "Captology Notebook" an unpublished article on the ethics of persuasive technology that is really worth reading... 

ANALYZING THE ETHICS OF PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY

2005

DANIEL BERDICHEVSKY
B.J. FOGG
RAMIT SETHI
MANU KUMAR

Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

Authors' addresses: Daniel Berdichevsky, 1006 Wall St. Los Angeles, CA 90015; B.J. Fogg, Ramit Sethi and Manu Kumar, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University, Box 20456, Stanford, CA 94309
________________________________________________________________________

1. INTRODUCTION
When a doctor tells you your blood pressure is too high, you may modify your lifestyle to compensate: less salt, more exercise, fewer freedom fries. In a sense, the doctor has committed a persuasive act. We are unlikely to question the ethics of her having done so. But what if the doctor were out of the picture? Suppose a device at your bedside not only informed you of your blood pressure each morning, but shifted colors to convey the likelihood of your suffering a heart attack. Would such a persuasive technology be as ethical as a doctor giving you advice in her office? What if it were co-marketed with a treadmill?

The objective of this article is to describe and test a framework for analyzing the ethics of technologies that change people’s attitudes and behaviors. We focus on computerized persuasive technologies—the field known as “captology”—though similar considerations apply to non-computerized technologies, and even to technologies that change attitudes and behaviors by accident.

This idea of unintended persuasive outcomes is one reason we are revisiting this topic four years after the publication of an earlier piece by one of the authors, “Toward an Ethics of Persuasive Technology.” [Berdichevsky & Neuenschwander, 1999] Since 1999, persuasive elements have become common enough in both hardware and software—and especially on the web—that designers may not always be conscious of their persuasive nature. They may take them for granted. This telephone beeps to remind you to check your voice mail; that search engine changes its logo every day in a continuing narrative to pull you back more often . But even when persuasion is incidental to other design motives, it requires ethical attention—particularly because end users may not be expecting it and are therefore caught with their defenses down. [Fogg, 2002]

Why pay special attention to computerized persuasive technologies? The chief reason is that while non-computerized technologies can certainly be persuasive, only rarely can they stand on their own . A television with no infomercial to display will not convince you to buy new cutlery. A whip without someone to wield it will cow no slave into obedience. Even a carpool lane requires enforcement.

What makes computerized persuasive technologies more interesting than these examples is that they can persuade independently. Computerized persuasive technologies are also dynamic, changing in response to different users and their inputs. They allow persuasion—and the persuasive experience—to be simultaneously mass-manufactured and user-specific. For instance, a wristwatch that encourages you to keep running by congratulating you on the specific number of calories you have burned is completely self-contained. This leads to questions of agency: do you blame the wristwatch if a runner suffers a heart attack trying to achieve a certain pulse?

The full article can be accessed here 

Re-blogged from Smart Mobs 

Following the New York Times story on "audio illusion, phantom phone rings or ringxiety and fauxcellarm" - described as the new reason for people to either bemoan the techno-saturation of modern life or question their sanity, News.com.au via Engadget now claims the phenomenon - of falsely believing you hear your mobile phone ringing or vibrating - is so widespread it has an official name: "ringxiety" and it's really the subconscious calculating how popular we are.

David Laramie, from California's School of Professional Psychology, who coined the termed ringxiety and says he himself is a sufferer.

More on phanthom vibrations and phanthom rings in Ringtonia.

Via Kurzweilai.net

Researchers have shown that subliminal advertising may work after all..

New Scientist: It was a stunt that launched a thousand conspiracy theories. Market researcher James Vicary claimed in 1957 that he could get movie-goers to "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn" by flashing those messages on the screen for such a short time that viewers were unaware of it. People were outraged, and the practice was banned in the UK, Australia and the US.

Vicary later admitted that his study was fabricated, and scientists through the years who have tried to replicate it have largely failed. But now researchers have shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote a brand can be made to work.

 

Read the full article

From Smart Mobs

Neuro-biologist Susan Greenfield asked this interesting question:

From Mind Hacks

Neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield was featured on Radio 4's Today Programme this morning [realaudio] arguing that children are being medicated for ADHD when the problem might be caused by the over-use of 'electronic media' leading to short attention spans...

read the full post