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July 30, 2008
5 iPhone apps for health - but no real innovations
You'll find five iPhone apps for health at this web page:
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2008/07/5-great-health.html
Another list of health apps is here:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2008/07/iphone-on-call.html
Our lab reviewed health apps for handhelds in 2001. The story today seems the same: Most apps are either reference tools or they allow you to track your behavior (food diary, exercise log). Again, this is precisely what we found in 2001 when reviewing "state of the art" health apps for PocketPC and such. Back then and today, surprisingly few mobile apps use more interesting forms of motivation.
Where's the innovation?
--BJ Fogg
(Thanks to former lab member Rupa Patel for the initial pointer.)
Posted by BJ Fogg at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2008
How does Facebook motivate you to update your status?
Facebook uses a number of persuasive strategies to make you update your status with a new message. If your status message becomes stale after a week or you manually clear it, a security alarm goes off telling Facebook engineers to act quickly and convince you to update (surveillance).
Thinking of a new SMU can be difficult, so Facebook automatically places the question, “What are you doing right now?” prominently for you to see. Having a specific question to answer makes it easier to comply (tunneling). People have high ability when it comes to changing their status- it's a simple call to action. Facebook wants you to type anything in the little box even if it only makes sense to you. SMU on Facebook is like being on a stage but you can't always tell who watching.
Unless you subscribe to status updates on your phone like on Twitter or actively micro-blog, the chances of someone explicitly encouraging you to update is low. Therefore Facebook must use scheduled reinforcement to remind users to update their status regularly or face the punishment of a looming question (conditioning).
By asking what users are doing next to updates from friends, Facebook also encourages users to internalize their actions in relation to others. Facebook recommends SMUs from certain friends based on previous interaction (tailoring). The SMU algorithm senses interaction like chating or common group membership with someone and tries to display the most relevant SMUs. When you befriend a person you are telling Facebook that you are interested in this person right now. Facebook sees this as an opportunity to create an interaction point and displays your new friend’s SMU. The process of Facebook monitoring you is persuasive because people are more likely to change their status if they know Facebook is paying attention and friends they care about are doing it too. When users fail to disclose new information, Facebook increases motivation by using a combination of surveillance, tunneling (info), conditioning, and tailoring strategies.
What motivates you to update?
Posted by Enrique at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2008
Join our review board for "The Psychology of Facebook"
Building on the course I taught at Stanford during spring 2008, my colleagues and I are creating a book likely called "The Psychology of Facebook." This edited volume will include about 25 chapters by different authors. We have over 70 submissions in hand now and are seeking people to help evaluate the contributions.
Below is how you join our review board. -- BJ Fogg
Posted by BJ Fogg at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)