Since cycling contributes to health, social and environmental benefits with low cost, it’s advocated
5 for wide population of both male and female in different age. It is promoted as health and environmental activities, cycling for transport, recreation and exercises. However, the participation in varied developed countries is different with gender. “In the U.S., men’s cycling trips surpass women’s by at least 2:1”, “in the Netherlands, where 27 percent of all trips are made by bike, 55 percent of all riders are women”; while “In Germany 12 percent of all trips are on bikes, 49 percent of which are made by women.” (Baker, 2009) Under the development of cycling behaviors in Australian cities and towns, the facilities are increasingly being used by cyclists but most of the cyclists are male. Therefore, the researchers proposed findings and guidelines as interventions to motivate females’ participation through creating supportive physical, social and cultural environments for cycling (Garrard et al., 2006). To advocate overall cycling behaviors for developing facilitations, investigations of frustrations and unwillingness are must be taken account of female populations in Taiwan.
To figure out the primary phenomenon in female cycling, we turn to persuasive researches before proposing corresponding strategies. While a number of persuasive design system or services for changing users’ attitudes or behavior are growing, several behavioral theories from social psychology are often drawn and extensively applied to the study such as Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, Goal-Setting Theory, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life or Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Those theories provide the rule of thumb that what will be reflected and interacted in individual for developing persuasive technologies design strategies.
Since captology presents a new perspective on the role of computers, the design space is large and relatively unexplored. The persuasive system domains or issues which are interested could be varied (Fogg, 1998), which is also can be employed in the issue of female cycling. However, it is identified and conducted that applications of traditional behavioral theories to digital environmental are often not able to cope with and give support for the vast amount of dynamics involved (Brown, 2008). For the technologies could immigrate into individual’s life and behavior change lead to intervene in individual’s social world, designers must therefore consider the social implications for the individual’s daily experience (Consolvo et al, 2009). In order to encourage designer’s access to design strategy process of persuasive technologies, the offer of target individual’s need, interests, and choices in behavior is essential and supportable.
Moreover, for cycling persuasive design, it could be more supportive to develop a systematic process and then give explicit design strategies for practical applying. In order to develop a more
6 expectable and specific strategies for target audiences, one of the direction is to proceed user study of exploring user’s real behaviors in their living context. Compare with traditional behavioral theories, user study is a research based on user’s perspective through understanding the life they interact and react to.
The collection and construction of information of behaviors from users’ experience conduct how users think and what’s their feel in their use experience. One of the main issues in this research is if user study could support the persuasive design and develop a practical study process.
In our research, the persuasion issue of cycling activity is confined as cycling recreation in female’s leisure times. For persuading more cycling activities, recreation such as riding in a leisure way along or traveling with friends is our target persuasion behavior. Therefore, using cycling only as a commuting tool but without other activities is not our expected behavior for persuasion. Based on understandings the reasons of both agreement and disagreement with cycling recreation activities, it’s possible to screen the audiences which designers target firstly. Through exploration with those audiences, frustrations and unwillingness behind them could be further appeared. In addition, the acceptable reasons from people who already changed to the purposed behaviors may provide proper approaches according to their real cases. Works of user study connect to the persuasive framework, which is the skeleton in persuasive design body, precise strategies and inspire persuasive design for female cycling.
1.3. Objectives
For helping and operating persuasive design in female cycling issue, there are already numerous developed theories and studies suggested designers the proper persuasive design principles. In particular, user study process promotes the exploration of problems and context of persuasion and proposes effective strategies for system development. With the point of view, three objectives in this thesis are focused as follows:
A. Apply a user study process for the developing of female cycling persuasive system
Before the concept development of persuasive design, a systematic user study process could be helpful to collect evidences which are obtain from user and analyzed for practical design supports. Through this research, the methodologies for user studies are proposed and applied through a persuasive case to conduct persuasion strategies for system evaluation or development.
7 B. Conduct the user study results and provide the supportive design strategies for female cycling After the process user study, the results should be interpreted and analyzed to propose for conducting the persuasion strategies for design. The integration of the study results and the persuasive theories are proposed to deliver the design strategies. Therefore, the processes to conduct persuasion strategies are essential for delivery.
C. Define the roles of using persuasive tools in persuasive design
Moreover, it’s essential to identify the process of applying user study and persuasive related theories in persuasive design. In Fig.1-5, the four roles are defined as target persuasive issue, users to study, persuasive tools, and system designer and proposed to identify the relationship among each role in research process.
It’s essential to figure out how user study connect each roles in persuasive design.
Fig. 1-5 Each role of persuasive design user study process for developing design strategy
In sum, the research aim is applying the user study process to derive design strategies guide to help the process of female cycling persuasive design.
1.4. Research issues
In this research, the issues of user study process for persuasive design have several aspects which corresponded to three objectives.
User study process for persuasive design
The users to study
Persuasive tools
Designer Persuasion
issue
8 A. How to undertake a user study process
Firstly, user study is proposed to obtain what information and opportunity could be adopted persuasion techniques on the appropriate audiences. The constructing of study process should clarify each step in the planning of user study for the following interpretations.
B. What is persuasion strategy for persuasive system design
Along with user study process, the study results are corresponded to the persuasive theories and are conducted with persuasion strategies. The strategies would be evaluated through the study experiments and delivered in a specific format to help designer interpret for concept development.
C. How to apply persuasive tools in system design and what it helps
In this research, user study is proposed to help explore persuasion contexts. For outputting persuasive design strategies, the four roles of persuasion issues, users, persuasive tools and designers are connected and cooperated in research process. The utilization of persuasive theories combined in user study process with our persuasive issue is also interested for delivering design strategy.
1.5. Outline of thesis
There are six chapters in this thesis. In chapter one, which is introduction, presents the background, motivation, objective and issues of this research. In chapter two, the literature reviews follow with the persuasion theories and development for clarifying the scope and contribution in this research. In chapter three, the methodologies of user study process and analysis are bought up for research development. In chapter four, the research findings are delivered and proposed and contributed for discussing with the research results in the following chapter five. Finally, results of conclusion, limitation, contribution and future works upon this research are proposed as the end of this thesis.
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Chapter 2
Literature Reviews
For the development of persuasive technologies applied in practical issue with female cycling persuasion, there were numerous literatures proposing strategies which came up from different aspects.
From the psychology field, scholars applied the investigations of behaviors or cognitive theories in human beings to give design principles and suggestions. The reviews and observations over developed technologies also provide lots of results for evaluating the implement of persuasion. Recently, with the researches of persuasive design through user study, design, prototyping and evaluation, there are lots of implications for persuasive design in a wide range of domains, from environmental conservation to activity encouragement. However, for facilitating the developing of persuasive technologies systematically, the design or evaluation processes are proposed.
For the research aim to propose persuasion strategy for developing persuasive design with encouraging female cycling, the investigation processes based on this research purposes contains four parts: related works, persuasive theory and strategy, persuasive system design process and evaluation tools, and the research methodologies for user study and analysis.
2.1 Related works
Since cycling is an activity lifestyle which is related to health and environment, different issues are studied in varied field. Studies of female cycling are therefore proposed in transport, physical activities and recreation. For cycling use may differ from age, income levels, and geographic areas, there are several studies focus on the differences by gender (Krizek et al.,2004). To inspect the difference firstly, safety concerns include road and parking are the main obstacle to cycling in both U.S. and Australia (Garrard, 2003; Krizek et al.,2004). The risk perceptions of injuries in cycling are also level down females’ willingness.
It indicated that personal experience of cycling is effective way of bridging the gap between perception and actual situations (Garrard, 2003).
However, for the lack of studies in female cycling, a comprehensive Australia study with both
10 qualitative and quantitative surveys were proposed for identifying a series of findings of female cycling in 2006. Not only the motivations, supports, and constraints within female cycling participation were identified, the recommendations for strategies or programs were also developed for increasing participation (Garrard, Crawford, and Hakman, 2006). Guidelines based on this research were presented for encouraging female to cycle. The Australia research results delivered valuable references of encouraging female cycling participation through solid studies. In order to producing strategies for developing persuasive system design in this research, there are some related persuasive technologies researches and works produced for encouraging physical activity.
The persuasive technology design work was proposed with a mobile phone-based fitness journal device called Houston for encouraging physical activity by providing personal awareness of physical level and the as media with physical activity related social interaction among friends. Four design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activities are conducted with (1) give users proper credit for activities (2) provide personal awareness (3) support social influence (4) consider the practical constraints of users’ lifestyle (Consolvo et al., 2006). On the other hand, employing goals in persuasive technologies are proposed to be effective way to encourage behavior change through studying the UbiFit system on mobile phone for encouraging physical activity. Their three-month field study presented findings that goal sources (who should set the goal) and goal timeframe (over what time period should an individual have to achieve the goal) can be specifically implemented (Consolvo et al., 2009).
Under the goal to develop a persuasive system for encouraging female cycling in Taiwan, literatures related to persuasive theories, tools, or processes are collected for helping to propose the persuasion strategies through user study processes.
2.2 Persuasion strategies from traditional behavior change and cognitive theories
To explore the developments of persuasion, the literatures from traditional cognitive and behavior theories are reviewed for understanding fundamentally. For suggesting study of person’s attitudes toward behavior and the subjective norms of how a person will act, there are abundant and well-developed theories and studies in the field of both psychology and social psychology using in persuasive design. Through the overview of theory-driven design strategies, we will review some theories which are frequently used in persuasive design.
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2.2.1 From the perspective of traditional behavior change theories
Goal-setting theory had been purposed since 1960s to describe how people respond to different types of specific goals, be stimulated human motivation and further promote higher task performances.
Fundamentally, self-efficacy, normative information of expected performance level, and the satisfaction from achieving the goal are three ways to specify how to stimulate high performance. The goal, which is challenging but realistically achieved, should be easy to gauge the progress and know when people meet the goal. However, Group Goals which is associated with higher performance than individual goals tends to disappear when the size of group increasing. For recommend to the online communities designs, these communities should set specific and challenging contribution goals for all members (Beenen etal., 2004). It was considered an effective way for designing and evaluating a mobile UbiFit system to encourage physical activities in specific implements with goal-setting strategy. In this study, the five goal sources, (1) self-set, (2) assigned, (3) participatory, (4) guided, and (5) group-set, are employed for persuasive technology design used in physical activity which is originally identified and represented by Shiltz, Horowitz, and Townsend (Consolvo etal., 2009).
The Transtheoretical Model (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1982) is often referred to the studies of health promotion field. It constructed to represent the individual process of change, including the stages to intentionally modify addictive or other problematic behaviors. Based on the transtheoretical model, according to the work of Consolvo, McDonald, and Landay (2009), they suggested that a persuasive technology should focus on different stages and give the validate strategies on individuals, which is presented in Table 2-1.
12 Table 2-1 Persuasion strategy from five stages of transtheoretical model (Consolvo et al, 2009)
As a role of persuasive
technology Description in each stage Strategies
1
Precontemplators No intention to change in the
foreseeable future Education
2
Contemplator Contemplation—seriously considering
changing, but has not committed to taking action Techniques for overcoming barriers or rewards for performing the desired behavior
3
Preparation stager Intends to take action in the next month and has unsuccessfully taken action in the past year
Rewarding behaviors, even when the behavior is not consistent and increasing awareness of patterns of the behavior to encourage consistency
4
Action stager Has performed the desired behavior consistently for less than six months;
Keeping track of progress to maintain consistency and possibly incorporate
elements of social influence
5
Maintainer Has consistently performed the desired behavior for six or more months
Coping strategies for problems encountered previously and helping the individual realize how she is becoming “the kind of person one wanted to be”
Adams and White (2005) integrated number of reasons why stage-based interventions to promote physical activity don’t work, and then concluded that the interventions based on Transtheoretical Model may have failed to appreciate the true complexity of task:
Exercise behavior is a complex of different behaviors, not a single behavior such as cigarette smoking.
Determining current stage of change is crucial to intervention delivery, yet few validated algorithms are used.
Exercise behavior is influenced by numerous external factors not considered by the TTM.
The TTM suggests that stage progression is a significant outcome, but this is not always associated with behavior change.
Stage-based interventions are highly complex and may require more than one level of development and evaluation.
According to other researches, the TTM theory does not account for individual’s different levels of exercise and address the possibility for skipping between the stages (Maitland etal., 2006).
Cognitive Dissonance Theory is developed to explain what happens when an individual realizes the attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent. The motivation to reduce the experience of psychological discomfort, which is also the dissonance they experienced, depends on the importance of the beliefs or behaviors for individual (Festinger, 1957). Reviewer proposed the persuasive technology should help the individual to remain focused on their commitment to change by providing the awareness persistently available and easy to access (Consolvo, McDonald, and Landay, 2009).
13 Turn to social larger social context. Social Cognitive Theory based on the ideas that people learn by watching others do and learn actions through observations with positive reinforcement (Miller and Dollard, 1941). Giving advice from professionals, sharing activity information, and providing personal relevant tailored information are the evidences of simulating and increasing activity affected by wider social interaction (Maitland etal., 2006). According to Karau and Willams’ collective effort model (1993), people work harder individually than in group. Give the believing that their contribution is important to the group’s performance and identifiable when they like the group they are working with (Beenen etal., 2004).
Consolvo, McDonald, and Landay (2009) adopted and illustrated the valuable ideas for persuasive technologies from Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman, 1959) to address social interaction that individual manage daily. It is used the metaphor of the theater stage to describe how people interact with others. To encourage lifestyle behavior change, there are some implications when using technology:
Table 2-2 Persuasion implication from presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman, 1959) Metaphor Description Implications for technology support
Impression management
Information which collected and used is in control
It may be important to provide the ability for the individual to disguise something about their activities, enable the individual to misrepresent something of their behavior, or support secret consumption
Backstage
A place where performer can relax and drop their front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character
Give individual’s control space so it enables individual to perform differently for different audiences.
Understanding and applying the behavior change theories and studies help to address individual or social aspects in varied design cases. However, the uses of traditional psychology theories are proven not controllable and enough to cope with. Beenen etal. (2004) tried to build a link between social science theories and CSCW design in tests and found social science theories may not cover the real design tasks when multiple features vary simultaneously. The norm in social psychological research is abstracting the contextual details away. Designers are therefore forcing to improvise when attempting to apply social psychological knowledge to solve design problems.
2.2.2 Persuasive design from the perspective of cognitive processes
Before the decision of changing to the purposed behaviors, information processing theory and
14 Cognitive consistency theories are fundamental used to explain the individual’s process when perceiving persuasion information in human mind. The Elaboration Likelihood Model and influence techniques suggested by Cialdini further purposed for promising persuasive communication approaches (Harjumma and Oina-Kukkonen, 2007).
Elaboration Likelihood Model was proposed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) and fundamentally illustrated a individual’s think process when receive a message and try to understand the communication.
They suggested there are a central route and a peripheral route to persuasion. A person may possibly be persuaded through the central route who involves in the elaboration of persuasive message and carefully think about the content, while a person may be persuaded through the peripheral route who only perceives surface characteristics of persuasive message and not think carefully but only skims over it.
The routes are flexible since people can also swing between the two. Therefore, persuasion message should be considered when designers decide which information they want to process.
On the other hand, Cialdini (1998), who is the well known psychologist and also the author of Influence: The psychology of persuasion. In his book, he verified people tend to response and make decision
On the other hand, Cialdini (1998), who is the well known psychologist and also the author of Influence: The psychology of persuasion. In his book, he verified people tend to response and make decision