Computers as Persuasive Technology (Captology)

There is little doubt in my mind that environment and objects in the environment influence how we feel, what we think, and how we behave. One of the most interesting challenges is how to design spaces in order to increase the chances that certain events will happen. Feng shui adopts a similar belief--that we can design spaces to create different effects. For example, how can we design factories in order to increase worker safety? How can we design hospital rooms to increase patient comfort, calmness, and compliance with treatments? How can we design classrooms to stimulate student active learning?

Marshal McLuhan is famous for saying that "The medium is the message". Basically, McLuhan meant by this that media (or technologies) have profound effects on what people do, think, and/or believe. Media have affordances that either 1) enhance (what the medium amplifies or intensifies), 2) obsolesce (what the medium drives out of prominence), 3) retrieve (what the medium recovers which was previously lost), or 4) reverse (what the medium does when pushed to its limits). For example, a cell phone 1) amplifies verbal information exchange, 2) obsolesces the land line and face to face communication, 3) retrieves 24/7 communication [that was lost when people stopped living together in small groups], and 4) when pushed to its limit becomes virtual communication. Yet, cell phones are limited in the sense that they do not facilitate group interactions or collaboration of more than 2 people at the same time. They have a variety of functions (information storage and retrieval, one-to-one communication, text messaging, personal information manager, camera, video recorder, clock...). Yet, because of the design, I find myself primarily using my cell phone as a clock (since the time is so prominently displayed on the surface). I hate talking on cell phones because 1) I don't want to be available to people 24/7, 2) the sound quality varies and it annoys me when I can't hear what someone has said, and 3) I'd rather spend my time and energy doing other things.

The good people at Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab have coined the term "captology" to represent media affordances or how media are used to persuade people. Persuasion with computers occurs in several arenas: 1) commerce--selling someone something, 2) health--trying to influence people's health behaviors, 3) safety--for example providing prompts and warning messages about downloading a specific filetype or visiting a certain website, and 4) participation--click here, subscribe, update, explore... [Do take a look at the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.]

One point that the captology folks is missing is the social aspect of computing. People's behavior, attitudes, and feelings often change in response to other people's behavior, attitudes, and feelings. Recently, there is an increase of participatory websites (such as Post Secret), virtual reality sites such as Second Life, and there are even people taping into human enjoyment of games to accomplish herculean tasks (watch the human computation video). While I've never been a big fan of the monkey see, monkey do theory of human behavior, people do learn from each other and influence one another's behavior, attitudes, and feelings. Creating cooperative spaces is yet another fascinating area to explore.

I guess what personally interests me is the creation of information spaces. We know that when people are able to personalize (customize) their information spaces [such as computers--wallpaper, fonts, sizes, colors, layout...], they work more productively. But what about the information we are exposed to? How much control do we ave over the information we are exposed to? Can we create information spaces with messages that positively or negatively influence certain behaviors providing reinforcement, rewards, or other intrinsic/extrinsic benefits? Do we need to be exposed to a wide range of messages in order to open up our minds and become better people? As always... Who decides? Who decides!