research-article

Understanding the Mechanics of Persuasive System Design: A Mixed-Method Theory-driven Analysis of Freeletics

Authors:

Hanna Schneider,

Florian AltAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 309 - 320

https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858290

Published: 07 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

While we know that persuasive system design matters, we barely understand when persuasive strategies work and why they only work in some cases. We propose an approach to systematically understand and design for motivation, by studying the fundamental building blocks of motivation, according to the theory of planned behavior (TPB): attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control. We quantitatively analyzed (N=643) the attitudes, beliefs, and values of mobile fitness coach users with TPB. Capacity (i.e., perceived ability to exercise) had the biggest effect on users' motivation. Using individual differences theory, we identified three distinct user groups, namely followers, hedonists, and achievers. With insights from semi-structured interviews (N=5) we derive design implications finding that transformation videos that feature other users' success stories as well as suggesting an appropriate workout can have positive effects on perceived capacity. Practitioners and researchers can use our theory-based mixed-method research design to better understand user behavior in persuasive applications.

References

[1]

Alexander T. Adams, Jean Costa, Malte F. Jung, and Tanzeem Choudhury. 2015. Mindless Computing: Designing Technologies to Subtly Influence Behavior. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). 719--730.

Digital Library

[2]

Icek Ajzen. 1991. Theories of Cognitive Self-Regulation The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 2 (1991), 179--211.

[3]

Icek Ajzen. 2006. Constructing a theory of planned behavior questionnaire. (2006). http://people.umass.edu/aizen/pdf/tpb.measurement.pdf accessed on 2015-07-05.

[4]

Icek Ajzen and B. L. Driver. 1991. Prediction of leisure participation from behavioral, normative, and control beliefs: An application of the theory of planned behavior. Leisure Sciences 13, 3 (1991), 185--204.

[5]

Sonia M. Arteaga, Mo Kudeki, Adrienne Woodworth, and Sri Kurniawan. 2010. Mobile System to Motivate Teenagers? Physical Activity. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '10). 1--10.

Digital Library

[6]

Albert Bandura. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (1 ed.). Prentice Hall.

[7]

Richard Bartle. 1996. Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs. Journal of MUD research 1, 1 (1996), 19.

[8]

Frank Bentley, Konrad Tollmar, Peter Stephenson, Laura Levy, Brian Jones, Scott Robertson, Ed Price, Richard Catrambone, and Jeff Wilson. 2013. Health Mashups: Presenting Statistical Patterns Between Wellbeing Data and Context in Natural Language to Promote Behavior Change. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 20, 5, Article 30 (Nov. 2013), 27 pages.

Digital Library

[9]

Wynne W. Chin. 2010. How to Write Up and Report PLS Analyses. In Handbook of Partial Least Squares. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 655--690.

[10]

Tom Chiu, Dong Ping Fang, John Chen, Yao Wang, and Christopher Jeris. 2001. A Robust and Scalable Clustering Algorithm for Mixed Type Attributes in Large Database Environment. In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD '01). 263--268.

Digital Library

[11]

Gilbert A. Churchill. 1979. A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Constructs. Journal of Marketing Research 16, 1 (1979), 64--73.

[12]

Jan Cieciuch, Eldad Davidov, Michele Vecchione, Constanze Beierlein, and Shalom H. Schwartz. 2014. The Cross-National Invariance Properties of a New Scale to Measure 19 Basic Human Values: A Test Across Eight Countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 45, 5 (2014), 764--776.

[13]

Sunny Consolvo, Katherine Everitt, Ian Smith, and James A. Landay. 2006. Design Requirements for Technologies That Encourage Physical Activity. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '06). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 457--466.

Digital Library

[14]

Sunny Consolvo, David W. McDonald, Tammy Toscos, Mike Y. Chen, Jon Froehlich, Beverly Harrison, Predrag Klasnja, Anthony LaMarca, Louis LeGrand, Ryan Libby, Ian Smith, and James A. Landay. 2008. Activity Sensing in the Wild: A Field Trial of Ubifit Garden. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 1797--1806.

Digital Library

[15]

Eldad Davidov, Peter Schmidt, and Shalom H. Schwartz. 2008. Bringing Values Back In: The Adequacy of the European Social Survey to Measure Values in 20 Countries. Public Opinion Quarterly 72, 3 (2008), 420--445.

[16]

H.J. Eysenck. 1992. Four ways five factors are not basic. Personality and Individual Differences 13, 6 (1992), 667--673.

[17]

B. J. Fogg. 2002. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. Ubiquity 2002, December, Article 5 (Dec. 2002).

Digital Library

[18]

Caroline Free, Gemma Phillips, Leandro Galli, Louise Watson, Lambert Felix, Phil Edwards, Vikram Patel, and Andy Haines. 2013. The Effectiveness of Mobile-Health Technology-Based Health Behaviour Change or Disease Management Interventions for Health Care Consumers: A Systematic Review. PLoS Med 10, 1 (01 2013), e1001362.

[19]

Roland Gasser, Dominique Brodbeck, Markus Degen, Jrg Luthiger, Remo Wyss, and Serge Reichlin. 2006. Persuasiveness of a Mobile Lifestyle Coaching Application Using Social Facilitation. In Persuasive Technology. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3962. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 27--38.

Digital Library

[20]

Joseph F. Hair Jr, G. Tomas M. Hult, Christian Ringle, and Marko Sarstedt. 2013. A primer on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Sage Publications.

[21]

Sajanee Halko and Julie A. Kientz. 2010. Personality and Persuasive Technology: An Exploratory Study on Health-promoting Mobile Applications. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (PERSUASIVE'10). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 150--161.

Digital Library

[22]

Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Tuomas Pakkanen. 2014. Do Persuasive Technologies Persuade? - A Review of Empirical Studies. In Persuasive Technology. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 8462. Springer International Publishing, 118--136.

[23]

Eric B. Hekler, Predrag Klasnja, Jon E. Froehlich, and Matthew P. Buman. 2013. Mind the Theoretical Gap: Interpreting, Using, and Developing Behavioral Theory in HCI Research. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 3307--3316.

Digital Library

[24]

Joerg Henseler, Christian M. Ringle, and Marko Sarstedt. 2015. A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 43, 1 (2015), 115--135.

[25]

Yamini Karanam, Leslie Filko, Lindsay Kaser, Hanan Alotaibi, Elham Makhsoom, and Stephen Voida. 2014. Motivational Affordances and Personality Types in Personal Informatics. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct Publication (UbiComp '14 Adjunct). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 79--82.

Digital Library

[26]

Saskia M Kelders, Robin N Kok, Hans C Ossebaard, and Julia EWC Van Gemert-Pijnen. 2012. Persuasive System Design Does Matter: a Systematic Review of Adherence to Web-based Interventions. Journal of Medical Internet Research 14, 6 (nov 2012), e152.

[27]

Jesper Kjeldskov and Connor Graham. 2003. A Review of Mobile HCI Research Methods. In Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2795. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 317--335.

[28]

Predrag Klasnja and Wanda Pratt. 2012. Healthcare in the pocket: Mapping the space of mobile-phone health interventions. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 45, 1 (2012), 184--198.

Digital Library

[29]

Kari Kuutti and Liam J. Bannon. 2014. The Turn to Practice in HCI: Towards a Research Agenda. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 3543--3552.

Digital Library

[30]

Julie Anne Lee, Geoffrey Soutar, and Jordan Louviere. 2008. The BestWorst Scaling Approach: An Alternative to Schwartz's Values Survey. Journal of Personality Assessment 90, 4 (2008), 335--347.

[31]

Joanne MacLean and Shannon Hamm. 2008. Values and Sport Participation: Comparing Participant Groups, Age, and Gender. Journal of Sport Behavior 31, 4 (2008), 352--367.

[32]

Theresa M. Marteau, Gareth J. Hollands, and Paul C. Fletcher. 2012. Changing Human Behavior to Prevent Disease: The Importance of Targeting Automatic Processes. Science 337, 6101 (2012), 1492--1495.

[33]

Susan Michie and Marie Johnston. 2012. Theories and techniques of behaviour change: Developing a cumulative science of behaviour change. Health Psychology Review 6, 1 (2012), 1--6.

[34]

Oded Nov and Ofer Arazy. 2013. Personality-targeted Design: Theory, Experimental Procedure, and Preliminary Results. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '13). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 977--984.

Digital Library

[35]

Gabriele Oettingen. 2012. Future thought and behaviour change. European Review of Social Psychology 23, 1 (2012), 1--63.

[36]

Harri Oinas-Kukkonen and Marja Harjumaa. 2008. A Systematic Framework for Designing and Evaluating Persuasive Systems. In Persuasive Technology. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5033. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 164--176.

Digital Library

[37]

James M. Olver and Todd A. Mooradian. 2003. Personality traits and personal values: a conceptual and empirical integration. Personality and Individual Differences 35, 1 (2003), 109--125.

[38]

Alina Pommeranz, Christian Detweiler, Pascal Wiggers, and Catholijn M. Jonker. 2011. Self-reflection on Personal Values to Support Value-sensitive Design. In Proceedings of the 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (BCS-HCI '11). British Computer Society, Swinton, UK, UK, 491--496.

Digital Library

[39]

WilliamT Riley, DanielE Rivera, AudieA Atienza, Wendy Nilsen, SusannahM Allison, and Robin Mermelstein. 2011. Health behavior models in the age of mobile interventions: are our theories up to the task? Translational Behavioral Medicine 1, 1 (2011), 53--71.

[40]

Shalom H. Schwartz. 1994. Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values? Journal of Social Issues 50, 4 (Jan. 1994), 19--45.

[41]

Shalom H. Schwartz, G. Melech, A. Lehmann, S. Burgess, M. Harris, and V. Owens. 2001. Extending the cross-cultural validity of the theory of basic human values with a different method of measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psych. 32, 5 (Sept. 2001), 519--542.

[42]

Natalie Taylor, Mark Conner, and Rebecca Lawton. 2012. The impact of theory on the effectiveness of worksite physical activity interventions: a meta-analysis and meta-regression. Health Psychology Review 6, 1 (2012), 33--73.

[43]

Tammy Toscos, Anne Faber, Shunying An, and Mona Praful Gandhi. 2006. Chick Clique: Persuasive Technology to Motivate Teenage Girls to Exercise. In CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '06). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 1873--1878.

Digital Library

[44]

Rolf Weiber and Daniel Muhlhaus. 2014. Strukturgleichungsmodellierung: Eine anwendungsorientierte Einführung in die Kausalanalyse mit Hilfe von AMOS, SmartPLS und SPSS. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg.

[45]

Rebecca Weston and Paul A Gore. 2006. A brief guide to structural equation modeling. The Counseling Psychologist 34, 5 (2006), 719--751.

[46]

Yan Xu, Erika Shehan Poole, Andrew D. Miller, Elsa Eiriksdottir, Dan Kestranek, Richard Catrambone, and Elizabeth D. Mynatt. 2012. This is Not a One-horse Race: Understanding Player Types in Multiplayer Pervasive Health Games for Youth. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '12). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 843--852.

Digital Library

[47]

Nick Yee. 2006. Motivations for play in online games. Cyber Psychology & Behavior 9, 6 (2006), 772--775.

Cited By

Kuru H(2023)Identifying Behavior Change Techniques in an Artificial Intelligence-Based Fitness App: A Content AnalysisHealth Education & Behavior10.1177/1090198123121358651:4(636-647)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/10901981231213586
Eska BPhilip MWozniak PSchmidt AKarolus J(2023)[Don't] Let The Bodies HIIT The Floor: Fostering Body Awareness in Fast-Paced Physical Activity Using Body-Worn SensorsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36042507:MHCI(1-27)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3604250
Anuyah OBadillo-Urquiola KMetoyer R(2023)Characterizing the Technology Needs of Vulnerable Populations for Participation in Research and Design by Adopting Maslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581221(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581221
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Understanding the Mechanics of Persuasive System Design: A Mixed-Method Theory-driven Analysis of Freeletics
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods
  2. Interaction design

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Persuasive system design: state of the art and future directions
Persuasive '09: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology

This paper provides an overview of the current state of the art in persuasive systems design. All peer-reviewed full papers published at the first three International Conferences on Persuasive Technology were analyzed employing a literature review ...
Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do

Mother Nature knows best--How engineered organizations of the future will resemble natural-born systems.
A behavior model for persuasive design
Persuasive '09: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology

This paper presents a new model for understanding human behavior. In this model (FBM), behavior is a product of three factors: motivation, ability, and triggers, each of which has subcomponents. The FBM asserts that for a person to perform a target ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2016

6108 pages

ISBN:9781450333627

DOI:10.1145/2858036

General Chairs:
Jofish Kaye
Yahoo
,
Allison Druin
University of Maryland / National Park Service
,
Program Chairs:
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan
,
Dan Morris
Microsoft
,
Juan Pablo Hourcade
University of Iowa

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 May 2016

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI'16

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI'16: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 7 - 12, 2016

California, San Jose, USA

Acceptance Rates

CHI '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 565 of 2,435 submissions, 23%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

17
Total Citations
View Citations
1,111
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)33
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 09 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kuru H(2023)Identifying Behavior Change Techniques in an Artificial Intelligence-Based Fitness App: A Content AnalysisHealth Education & Behavior10.1177/1090198123121358651:4(636-647)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/10901981231213586
Eska BPhilip MWozniak PSchmidt AKarolus J(2023)[Don't] Let The Bodies HIIT The Floor: Fostering Body Awareness in Fast-Paced Physical Activity Using Body-Worn SensorsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36042507:MHCI(1-27)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3604250
Anuyah OBadillo-Urquiola KMetoyer R(2023)Characterizing the Technology Needs of Vulnerable Populations for Participation in Research and Design by Adopting Maslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581221(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581221
Huang BThomas TGroenewolt Bvan Berkum E(2022)An investigation of the motivators and barriers of smartphone app incentives for encouraging cyclingDecision Analytics Journal10.1016/j.dajour.2022.1001275(100127)Online publication date: Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dajour.2022.100127
Huang BThomas TGroenewolt BClaasen Yvan Berkum E(2021)Effectiveness of incentives offered by mobile phone app to encourage cycling: A long‐term studyIET Intelligent Transport Systems10.1049/itr2.1203415:3(406-422)Online publication date: 4-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.1049/itr2.12034
Schneider H(2019)Designing for empowerment – An investigation and critical reflectionit - Information Technology10.1515/itit-2018-003661:1(59-65)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.1515/itit-2018-0036
Rapp ATirassa MTirabeni L(2019)Rethinking Technologies for Behavior ChangeACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/331814226:4(1-30)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3318142
Oduor MOinas-Kukkonen H(2019)Committing to change: a persuasive systems design analysis of user commitments for a behaviour change support systemBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2019.159849540:1(20-38)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1598495
Vollenwyder BIten GBrühlmann FOpwis KMekler E(2019)Salient beliefs influencing the intention to consider Web AccessibilityComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2018.11.01692:C(352-360)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.chb.2018.11.016
Pinder CVermeulen JCowan BBeale R(2018)Digital Behaviour Change Interventions to Break and Form HabitsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/319683025:3(1-66)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3196830
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten