Persuasive Technology 2008: Amy Goes to Oulu, Plus 2 Paper Features

More than a year and a half ago, my CLM colleague Sandra Niehaus and I attended the Second Annual Persuasive Technology conference at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, hosted by BJ Fogg and his team at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

At that time, I had only a rudimentary idea about what Persuasive Technology was and what its applicability to our company and my work might be.

Fortunately, I have a boss (and good friend) who encourages us CLM-ers to explore avenues that may not initially seem to be related to online marketing because of the opportunities such varied experiences and perspectives can offer.

And so we went. A summary of our experience at Persuasive Technology 2007 can be found here.

Little did I know that attending last year’s Persuasive Technology conference would result in attending this year’s conference in June (yeah, I’m tardy in publishing this post) – but this time it was in Oulu, Finland.

Yes, Finland.

If I would have flown straight there from Sacramento, it would have taken 21 hours and 3 layovers along the way. Fortunately, one of the stops was Paris.

So I took a few days’ vacation.

But that’s another story.

Needless to say, if you ever get the chance to take a solo trip to Paris for 5 days in late May, do it.

But enough about my vacation philosophies. Let’s talk about the conference.

Once in Oulu, I was part of a group of 113 attendees representing 20 countries at Persuasive Technology 2008. From the conference program, ‘PT 08′ is described as “a gathering of people interested in how software and related technologies influence people’s attitudes and behaviors.”And it was, but more about that in a second.

First, a few quick things about Oulu:

With a sun that never fully sets in the summer, free wireless throughout the city, a city government that welcomes its conference guests by hosting a reception in City Hall, and a Great Barn of the Maikkulankartano Mansion where I ate reindeer for the first time (yep, reindeer), Oulu is an enchanting place.

Oh, and it’s also home to the Air Guitar World Championships.

Wish I could have stayed for that. Next year, maybe.

Of note: Oulu also boasts large signs warning of very scary-looking mosquitoes. Fortunately for me, my encounters with them were brief – and involved only a little running.

When not dodging mosquitoes, eating reindeer or watching the sun not set at 4:30am, I immersed myself in Persuasive Technology 2008.

Part of this immersion also included being on the official Organizing Committee with an international crew of talented students and researchers as well as sitting on the Ethics Panel with Robert Biddle, Magnus Bång and Peter Øhrstrøm. I was honored to participate.

Some of the other topics covered this year at Persuasive Technology 2008 included:

• Online persuasion in social network systems, such as Facebook
• Website credibility, specifically regarding ‘active trust’ and behavioral intent
• Self-persuasion and ‘just in time’ motivational messages
• Systems for improving text passwords through persuasion
• Looking at persuasive technology through the paradigm of ‘Designing with Intent’

The conference program includes a full list of all the presentations, and the official Persuasive Technology 2008 conference proceedings can be reviewed and purchased here.

While this year’s conference tended to focus more on the academic and theoretical aspects of Persuasive Technology, a few presentations set the stage for combining the rigor of academia with ‘real-world’ industry applications.

This potential synergy between academia and industry was what I was looking for in attending this year’s conference.

Two of these presentations are featured below.

Persuasion for Stronger Passwords
Presenter: Alain Forget
School of Computer Science
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Paper Summary:
Amidst a fervent and heated discussion amongst some conference attendees, Alain Forget from Carleton University introduced a ‘password creation mechanism’ that uses Persuasive Technology to influence users to create stronger passwords.

The premise of Alain’s paper rests on the fact that “text passwords are the ubiquitous method of authentication used by most people for most online services” (excerpted from paper’s abstract) and yet many users still select weak passwords.

Why do they do this?

Some security professionals postulate that the problem of weak passwords can be attributed to a lack of user effort and motivation. Others suggest that users create weak passwords due to a misunderstanding of security threats and / or the limitations of human memory for highly secure passwords (read: loG6%47t).

Yeah, I wouldn’t remember that either.

Thus, to address this problem, Alain and his co-authors consider how principles of Persuasive Technology can help users create stronger passwords that are nonetheless memorable, through the use of their Persuasive Text Passwords Prototype system.

Alain’s paper, Persuasion for Stronger Passwords, is now accompanied by another, more recently published paper, Improving Text Passwords Through Persuasion, from his presentation at SOUPS (Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security) in July of this year.

Applicability to Industry:
From an online marketing perspective, a website visitor’s decision about whether or not to engage in an ecommerce purchase can be greatly influenced by the visitor’s impression of the security of that website.

And if that user is in the habit of selecting weak passwords, there is a greater chance of an information breach, thus potentially resulting in a decreased level of trust for that site and for ecommerce in general.

As a result, research like that which is presented by Alain and his colleagues in the papers featured above, provides a unique opportunity for an intersection between industry and academia in the promotion of selecting more secure passwords through persuasive mechanisms.

Nice work, Alain and team. Looking forward to seeing the continuation of your work.

Design with Intent: Persuasive Technology in a Wider Context
Presenter: Dan Lockton
School of Engineering and Design
Brunel University, Uxbridge, West London

Scheduled for the less-than-ideal afternoon slot on the third (and final) day of Persuasive Technology 2008, Dan Lockton’s Design with Intent presentation was nonetheless one of the rock star presentations of the conference.

Paper Summary:
Dan’s paper introduced the field of ‘Design with Intent‘ by explaining that Persuasive Technology (PT) is “an example of design intended to result in certain user behavior,” and that PT is “strategic, with defined, behavioral outcomes in mind” (taken from paper’s Introduction). Thus, PT fits into the wider context of Design with Intent (DwI).

What then followed in Dan’s talk was a series of images, photos, and examples of DwI in the broader world with a succinct and energized contextualization.

(You really must watch Dan’s Lockton’s SlideShare presentation.)

From ‘defensive design’ to ‘poka-yoke’ (from the Japanese for ‘mistake-proofing’) to ‘eco-design’, Dan effectively and enthusiastically brought the wider world of industry, philosophy and architecture as viewed through the paradigm of Design with Intent, directly to the door of Persuasive Technology.

You should have heard the applause.

Though there is no way I can effectively represent his work here, trust me when I say the brilliance of Dan’s work also lies in its potential. Though seasoned, he is still on an upward trajectory in his career and his contribution to DwI – and his work’s potential for broader applications – means he is ‘one to watch.’

I also encourage you to check out his site at: http://danlockton.co.uk/

Applicability to Industry:
In order to frame the significance of Dan’s work in the context of industry applications, specifically the online industry, I have excerpted some of Dan’s work on his What is Design with Intent? page:

“From the layout of shopping malls to digital rights management, our everyday lives are full of examples of products, systems and environments which have been designed to influence, guide or control – shape – our behaviour, using a wide range of techniques: technological, physical or psychological.

Intended commercial benefit is a major reason behind this; intended social benefit can be too (though it’s often fraught with politics). Sometimes the behaviour-shaping is helpful to the user; sometimes it’s serving someone else against the user’s best interests. Sometimes it’s trying to get the user to do something; sometimes it’s trying to stop the user doing something.

The common factor to all of this is intent on the part of the designer/engineer/planner or his or her corporate/political masters. This is Design with Intent: strategic design intended to result in certain user behaviour.”

Dan continues by stating:

“…Design with Intent techniques can be abstracted to a set of possible ‘tools’ (both physical and psychological) which can then be applied to other situations where a certain target behaviour is desired on the part of the user.”

Thus, the possible intersections between the work that Dan and others like him are doing and the fields of web usability, ecommerce, and conversion-based marketing become clear – and ripe with potential.

What remains, then, is for those of us on the side of industry to seek out opportunities to pursue those intersections.

In the meantime, best of luck to you, Dan Lockton, and others in your field. You’re doing great work.

Persuasive Technology 2009

Next year’s Persuasive Technology 2009 will be held at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. More details will be provided as they are available.

Until next time …