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January 24, 2006
New Direction in Captology Research
Happy new year from Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab! We're hitting the ground running in the new year with a new grant from the National Science Foundation. They're giving us the opportunity to focus our research on a new and exciting area: mobile persuasion.
By concentrating on mobile persuasion, we hope to develop a theory of what makes mobile devices (mobile phones, PDAs, handheld gaming systems, etc.) uniquely persuasive. Although our research has just begun, we already have a few ideas.
First, mobile devices have the power to be particularly contextual. People carry their mobile phones with them everywhere, and the number of mobile phones in the world is far ahead of internet adoption. Wherever you are right now, there are probably many mobile devices nearby. This "ready-at-hand" nature gives them the opportunity to intervene at just the right moment for maximum persuasive impact. For example, MyFoodPhone can help you watch what you eat when the food is right there in front of you.
Second, we feel that people develop special relationships with their mobile devices, unlike their computers. In particular, mobile devices can be part of one's appearance - a fashion statement. People customize ringtones, faceplates, and accessorize their phones with hanging charms. More than that, a device can be a status symbol. Paris Hilton, for example, paid a designer to encrust her mobile phone with a variety of semi-precious stones.
We think there are several more factors that make mobile persuasion unique, and we hope to explore them in our upcoming research. To get us started, though, we need your help.
To help jumpstart our research, we'd like you to take a survey by visiting http://captology.stanford.edu/survey.html. Each survey should take less than 5 minutes, and we guarantee that it will lighten your mood. If you'd like to take additional surveys, reload the page and a new one should show up.
Thanks!
Posted by Michael Huang at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
A small phrase reduces flame postings
I had coffee with Kevin Hale of ParticleTree today. He has an active discussion forum where lots of people come to debate recent articles on his site.
Kevin told me that he's had a problem with flamers, who come to the site and start posting angry comments about other people. They get out of hand very quickly.
Here was his answer:
He pre-filled the comment box with the simple phrase "Everybody needs a hug." Turns out that this small step reduced flame postings by a huge number.
Posted by Ramit Sethi at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)