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Ambient influence: can twinkly lights lure and abstract representations trigger behavioral change?

Published: 26 September 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Can ubiquitous technologies be designed to nudge people to change their behavior? If so, how? We describe an ambient installation that was intended to help people decide - and to encourage them to reflect - when confronted with a choice. In this particular case, it was whether to take the stairs or the elevator in their place of work. The rationale was to push people towards a desired behavior at the point of decision-making and to reflect upon theirs and others' aggregate behavior. We describe the ambient displays that were developed and the prototyping studies in which they were evaluated. The findings from an in-the-wild study are then presented. They reveal that even though people said they were not aware of changing their behavior, logged data of their actual behavior showed a significant change. We discuss these mixed findings in relation to whether ambient displays can influence at an unconscious or conscious level.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UbiComp '10: Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing
    September 2010
    366 pages
    ISBN:9781605588438
    DOI:10.1145/1864349
    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 ACM 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]

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    Published: 26 September 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. ambient displays
    2. behavioral change
    3. in-the-wild study
    4. persuasive technology

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    Ubicomp '10
    Ubicomp '10: The 2010 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing
    September 26 - 29, 2010
    Copenhagen, Denmark

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    UbiComp '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 39 of 202 submissions, 19%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

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    • (2024)Knitting Interactive Spaces: Fabricating Data Physicalizations of Local Community Visitors with Circular Knitting MachinesProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633359(1-14)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
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    • (2024)Exploring the Design of Technology-Mediated Nudges for Online MisinformationInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.230126541:1(515-542)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2024
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    • (2024)The Unexplored Potential of Playful Ambient Projection-Based AR to Improve Well-BeingAugmented Reality Games II10.1007/978-3-031-54475-0_8(149-184)Online publication date: 8-May-2024
    • (2023)Mental Health Post PandemicCommunity Mental Health and Well-Being in the New Normal10.4018/978-1-6684-7221-7.ch002(14-27)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2023
    • (2023)Toward Understanding the Design of Intertwined Human–Computer IntegrationsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/359076630:5(1-45)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2023
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