Persuasive Mobile Systems Design to Help People be Physically Active
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This PhD thesis puts forward the results of research activities I have carried out at \nthe Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Cagliari since \nMarch 2011. My work can be placed in the general field of Human-Computer Interaction and, more \nprecisely, in the relative new and trending area of Persuasive Computing. Broadly speaking, a \npersuasive system is a system designed to change some habits or behaviors of the users by means \nof persuasion. \nMy research activity sets out to address fundamental questions related to the application of \nmobile persuasive technologies to real-life problems, including: Are mobile technologies able to \npersuade people to a more physically active lifestyle? Are currently available systems actually \neffective? How can user experience design be improved in this class of softwares? How can human \nto device interaction be improved to favor users during their physical activities? Are these systems \nreally effective over long time periods? \nThe research activity this thesis presents, aimed at answering at previous questions through \nthe study of the effects of mobile persuasive systems designed to foster people to a more active \nlifestyle. \nIn literature, we can find many examples of prototypal persuasive mobile system. The results \nthey reported are encouraging but, almost always, they are deducted from qualitative studies \nover short periods of time. \nThis work endeavors to overcome these limitations through the development of a real world \ncomplex software platform designed to encourage people to a more active lifestyle. Users interact \nwith the platform mainly through two Android-based applications freely available on the market. \nThanks to our platform, our experimentations can rely on a conspicuous base of real users and \na huge amount of automatically recorded statistics for potentially unlimited periods of time.
Author: Paolo Pilloni
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W35976184