Yvonne de Kort – författare

Persuasive technology is the general class of technology that has the explicit purpose of changing human attitudes and behaviours. Persuasive technologies apply principles of social psychology in influencing people; principles of credibility, trust, reciprocity, authority and the like. Social psychologists have spent a great deal of effort over many years in trying to understand how attitude and behaviour change comes about, focusing on the effectiveness of human persuaders, and the persuasive power of messages delivered through non-interactive mass-media, such as newspapers or television. Harnessing the persuasive power of current interactive media, persuasive technology was recently identified as a separate research field, as evidenced by B.J. 1 Fogg’s first discussion of the domain. Fogg characterises computers designed to 2 persuade as the 5th major wave in computing . The scope of technologies that hold persuasive potential is broader than ICT alone, and includes persuasive product design and architectural design, yet the interactive nature of computers uniquely enables user-sensitive and user-adaptive responding, allowing persuasive messages to be tailored to the specific user in question, presented at the right place and at the right time, thereby heightening their likely persuasive impact.

Persuasive technology is the general class of technology that has the explicit purpose of changing human attitudes and behaviours. Persuasive technologies apply principles of social psychology in influencing people; principles of credibility, trust, reciprocity, authority and the like. Social psychologists have spent a great deal of effort over many years in trying to understand how attitude and behaviour change comes about, focusing on the effectiveness of human persuaders, and the persuasive power of messages delivered through non-interactive mass-media, such as newspapers or television. Harnessing the persuasive power of current interactive media, persuasive technology was recently identified as a separate research field, as evidenced by B.J. 1 Fogg’s first discussion of the domain. Fogg characterises computers designed to 2 persuade as the 5th major wave in computing . The scope of technologies that hold persuasive potential is broader than ICT alone, and includes persuasive product design and architectural design, yet the interactive nature of computers uniquely enables user-sensitive and user-adaptive responding, allowing persuasive messages to be tailored to the specific user in question, presented at the right place and at the right time, thereby heightening their likely persuasive impact.

Persuasive technology is the general class of technologies that purposefully apply psychological principles of persuasion – principles of credibility, trust, reciprocity, authority and the like – in interactive media, in the service of changing their users’ attitudes and behavior. Only one year ago, in 2006, the first international conference in this area, PERSUASIVE 2006 was hosted in Eindhoven. The conference was entirely geared towards communicating the progress made in the area of persuasive technology, and towards presenting recent results in theory, design, technology and evaluation. It brought together a wide range of research fields, including social psychology, HCI, computer science, industrial design, engineering, game design, communication science, and human factors, and the formula worked: plans for a follow-up were made immediately upon its conclusion. PERSUASIVE 2007, the second international conference on persuasive technology, was hosted by Stanford University, April 26–27. The program featured a large number of presentations, both oral and in poster format, on new findings, new conceptualizations and designs, and new reflections on persuasion through technology. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this conference featured the best new insights into how video games, mobile phone applications, and Web sites can be designed to motivate and influence people.