<![CDATA[Personalizing Behavior Change Technologies<br />CHI 2014 Workshop - Position Papers]]>Wed, 13 May 2026 14:47:53 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Personalizing Behavior Change Technologies:Improving Outcomes for Children with Chronic Disease]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 06:32:31 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/personalizing-behavior-change-technologiesimproving-outcomes-for-children-with-chronic-diseaseAri Pollack

Medication and lifestyle non-adherence is common in adolescent populations with chronic disease processes. A 2003 World Heath suggests only 50% adherence to longterm therapy for chronic illnesses in developed countries. Addressing this issue in adolescents is even more challenging as a result of developmental, social and familial factors[6]. It has been estimated that medication non adherence is a significant problem in 15-30% of American children with a chronic disease. Pediatric nephrology, the field of medicine that takes care of children and adolescents with kidney disease, follows a variety of different populations at risk for non-adherence including patients with hypertension, those on dialysis or status post kidney transplant. Multiple studies have shown that improved medication adherence in all three populations leads to improved outcomes. In addition, the costs for non adherence can be extremely high, especially for the transplant population where non-adherence to immunosuppressive therapy can lead to acute rejection and ultimately the loss of the transplanted kidney.
]]><![CDATA[The Younger Me: Utilizing Past Behavior Changes to Inform Personalized Persuasive Strategies]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:54:11 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/the-younger-me-utilizing-past-behavior-changes-to-inform-personalized-persuasive-strategiesAlexander Meschtscherjakov, Magdalena Gärtner, & Manfred Tscheligi

People run through different stages in their lives. Over time their behavior often changes with regards to a certain domain (e.g., driving behavior, diet, sports). Sometimes people realize why their behavior has changed, sometimes they don’t. In this paper we argue that we as researches can utilize past behavior changes to inform personalized persuasive strategies. We could benefit by identifying and analyzing mechanism that already have been proofed to be successful. In this paper we report on a probing study in which we aimed to gather information about what made car drivers change their behavior in the past.
]]><![CDATA[The Contextual Wheel of Practice]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:51:58 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/the-contextual-wheel-of-practiceJohanne Mose Entwistle, Mia Kruse Rasmussen, & Robert Brewer


The idea of Personalizing Behaviour Change Technologies brings with it promises of more effective technologies, that will have the intended effects of changed behavior in relations to achieving e.g. better health or reduced energy consumption. Based on our own qualitative empirical studies as well as studies done by others within the energy sector, we will argue that although this approach holds some promise for future persuasive technologies, the insights from psychology on which it builds would have more value when seen as part of a broader nexus that also includes other factors in trying to understand what shapes and influences behaviour. The approach presented in the call lacks an in-depth understanding of the contextual nature of human behaviour which is necessary to develop technologies that can actually lead to change. With the “Contextual Wheel of Practice” we present a theoretical approach and model that bridges insights from both psychology, anthropology, sociology and HCI in the attempt to base development of persuasive technologies on knowledge about both the human as well as the structural and material context within it exist. By doing so we propose a shift in focus from “personalizing Behaviour Change” to “contextualizing practice change”
]]><![CDATA[The Crowd and Persuasion - A Necessity for Individualized Persuasive Technologies?]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:48:14 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/the-crowd-and-persuasion-a-necessity-for-individualized-persuasive-technologiesPascal Lessel & Antonio Kruger

In this position paper, we discuss why we think that personalization on the level of persuasive technologies used is an important step for the next generation of persuasive systems. We focus on crowdsourcing / crowd-based computing in which many people (typically hundreds or thousands) participate to solve a specific goal and in which persuasive technologies that do not follow a “one-size-fits-all”-approach seem to be most suitable. We continue with a discussion on whether the crowd can also be used to personalize behavior change technology. We close this paper with an overview of recent projects that will serve as a testbed for our investigation of personalizing behavior change systems.
]]><![CDATA[Personalized Routine Support for Tackling Medication Non-Adherence]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:46:28 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/personalized-routine-support-for-tackling-medication-non-adherenceKatarzyna Stawarz, Anna L. Cox, & Ann Blandford


Behavior change interventions addressing medication non adherence tend to focus on intentional behavior and seem to ignore the fact that even motivated people can sometimes forget to take their medication. Behavior change often conjures up ideas of modifying or breaking bad habits; we argue that focusing on the development of good habits could be used to support memory and reduce unintentional non-adherence caused by forgetfulness. But the purposeful development of reliable habits is not easy. Our research shows that daily routines play an important role in supporting remembering of a medication regimen. We believe that, by facilitating the creation of good habits embedded into one’s own personalized daily routine, technology could not only reduce unintentional medication non-adherence, but also provide a better support in other types of health-related behavior change interventions.
]]><![CDATA[Supporting Patient Assessment of Risk using Patient Similarity: Implications for Behavior Change]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:42:25 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/supporting-patient-assessment-of-risk-using-patient-similarity-implications-for-behavior-changeLauren Wilcox & Jimeng Sun


Patients’ accurate assessment of health-related risk plays an important role in self-protective motivation and behavior change. Recent theories of behavior change treat risk perception in depth; however, less research has focused on how to draw on these theories to create convincing but intuitive explanations of risk to patients. In this paper, we advocate a new, personalized approach for presenting health-related risk to individuals, based on concrete information from similar patients. Advances in large-scale healthcare analytics have demonstrated the feasibility of computing inter-patient similarity through both knowledge-based and data-driven approaches. While originally designed based on physician use of patient data, analytics platforms could be designed to support compelling patient use cases as well.

At the workshop, we hope to outline the need and potential for patient-facing, clinical-similarity-based technologies to motivate health-related behavior change. We will share our understanding of relevant conceptual frameworks that can inform the design and evaluation of these technologies, identify open questions related to the use of these frameworks, and explore the experiences and insights of others working in related application domains.
]]><![CDATA[Building Personalized “Nudges” to Encourage Privacy Behaviors on Online Social Networks]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:39:24 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/building-personalized-nudges-to-encourage-privacy-behaviors-on-online-social-networksManya Sleeper & Pedro G. Leon

While sharing ideas, opinions, and information on social media can represent enormous benefits for users and society, sometimes apparently innocuous disclosures can lead to negative consequences. We are working on designing and evaluating behavioral “nudges” for social networks to help users make better online sharing decisions without forcing them to change their behaviors. Over the course of three field studies we have found that because users vary in posting behavior and privacy goals general-purpose nudges are not broadly effective. Thus, in ongoing research, we are moving toward more personalized, goal-based nudging interventions. We discuss past research, current research plans, and a desire to collaborate with a broader community of researchers interested in behavior-change technologies.
]]><![CDATA[One Size Fits None! Making Affective State a Key Variable of Behaviour Change Technology for Chronic Pain]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:36:08 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/one-size-fits-none-making-affective-state-a-key-variable-of-behaviour-change-technology-for-chronic-painAnnesha Singh, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, & Amanda Williams

Motivating physical activity in people with chronic pain has challenges over those present in the general population. Physical activity in people with chronic pain is affected by psychological factors such as anxiety and worry about exacerbating pain through movement. Current sensing technologies that can track movement and emotional states and respond with personalised feedback can help promote adherence to a programme of physical activity for this population. Further, tracking people’s pain levels, moods, and patterns of activity and giving related feedback can help them to become aware of their needs, ability and limits and hence better tailor their programme of physical activity. It can further help improve people’s perception of their own movement and by extension their self-efficacy and confidence. In this paper we discuss an under development interactive system, that incorporates automatic emotion recognition and related feedback to encourage people with chronic pain to increase their physical activity and by extension their quality of life.
]]><![CDATA[User-Similarity for Recommending Lifestyle and Behavior Changes]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:31:51 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/user-similarity-for-recommending-lifestyle-and-behavior-changesGaurav Paruthi


Users’ lifestyle, activities, sleep and work patterns are valuable information contained in the fine-grained sensor data collected from personal devices. The increasing use of wearables in the society enables this data to be collected from a diverse population, varying in physical, cultural and social characteristics. Furthermore analysis of an individual’s habits, lifestyles, wellness goals and their achievements and failures allow interventions that are personalized to the needs of the individual. Personalization of health-care by being sensitive to users’ medical, biological, cultural and socioeconomic characteristics could bring great benefit to the society. Building recommender systems that are designed to support this, is a step in that direction.
]]><![CDATA[Personalized Persuasion: Addressing Target Behavior, Persuadability and Persuasive Agents within PEACOX]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:29:12 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/personalized-persuasion-addressing-target-behavior-persuadability-and-persuasive-agents-within-peacoxJohann Schrammel, Sebastian Prost, & Manfred Tscheligi

Personalization is expected to increase the efficiency and impact of persuasive systems. In this workshop paper we present three different approaches that we have used to personalize a persuasive advisor for cross-modal trip planning. We report details of our approaches and discuss lessons learned based on our experiences during development as well as during the field trials of the system.
]]><![CDATA[Nudging Whom How: IT Proficiency, Impulse Control and Secure Behavior]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:11:08 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/nudging-whom-how-it-proficiency-impulse-control-and-secure-behaviorDebora Jeske, Lynne Coventry, Pam Briggs, & Aad van Moorsel


This paper considers the utility of employing behavioural nudges to change security-related behaviours. We examine the possibility that the effectiveness of nudges may depend on individual user characteristics – which represents a starting point for more personalized behaviour change in security. We asked participants to select from a menu of public wireless networks, using colour and menu order to ‘nudge’ participants towards making more secure choices. The preliminary results from 67 participants suggest that while nudging can be an effective tool to help non-experts to select more secure networks, certain user differences may also play a role. Lower (novice level) IT proficiency and diminished impulse control led to poorer security decisions. At the same time, we were able to demonstrate that our nudge effectively changed the behaviour of participants with poor impulse control. We discuss these implications and pose several questions for future research.
]]><![CDATA[Challenges for Personal Behavior Change Research on Information Diversity]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 05:08:35 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/challenges-for-personal-behavior-change-research-on-information-diversityJ. Nathan Matias, Elena Agapie, Catherine D’Ignazio, & Erhardt Graeff

Researchers have tested a variety of personal informatics systems to encourage diversity in the political leaning, geography, and demographics of information sources, often with a belief in the normative value of exposure to diverse information sources. Methods attempted have included information labeling of media sources, personalized metrics of reading behavior, personalized visualization of social media behavior, recommendation systems, and social introductions. Although some of these systems demonstrate positive results for the metrics they define, substantial questions remain on the interpretation of these results and their implications for future design. We identify challenges in defining normative values of diversity, potential algorithmic exclusion for some groups, and the role of personal tracking as surveillance. Furthermore, we outline challenges for evaluating systems and defining the meaningful social impact for information diversity systems operating at scale.
]]><![CDATA[How Do We Benefit From Online Social Comparison?]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 03:40:40 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/how-do-we-benefit-from-online-social-comparisonYoung June Sah, Wei Peng, & Jina Huh

In this position paper, we describe our ongoing work on psychological and behavioral effects of social comparison in social networking sites and online communities. As a framework, we examined the social comparison theory. Researchers identified two core comparison processes in social comparison in an offline context—assimilation and contrast. Assimilation refers to the process in which people focus on the similarity of the target and behave similar to the target. In this case, people prefer interacting with a better-off target. Contrast, on the other hand, describes a process where people attend to the discrepancy of the target and behave dissimilar from the target. In this case, people prefer to compare with a worse-off target. We expect that these processes also occur in online environments. To test our hypothesis, we designed an experiment in the context of an online weight loss community. We will manipulate member profiles (similar or dissimilar to each participant) and their status (better-off or worse-off). We will then test the effects of comparison on online-behavior, self evaluation and physical activities. We expect that the results can provide implications for utilizing social comparison theory in online health communities, especially in providing personalized suggestions on who to interact with depending on the user’s profile and current health status.
]]><![CDATA[Personalised Email Tools: A Solution to Email Overload?]]>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 03:32:14 GMThttps://personalizedchange.weebly.com/position-papers/personalised-email-tools-a-solution-to-email-overloadMarta E. Cecchinato, Jon Bird, & Anna L. Cox

The stress resulting from the daily demands of email exchange and management has been labelled email overload. The extent to which individuals are affected by email overload has much to do with personal, cultural, and contextual differences. However, in general people are inefficient at dealing with email and could potentially reduce the stress associated with it if they changed their behaviour. In this paper, we review some of the strategies offered in the literature, as well as some email tools that have been developed to help people manage their inboxes. We point out the benefits and disadvantages of them, suggesting that adaptive approaches might be more effective at facilitating email behaviour changes than fixed one-size-fits-all solutions. We argue that the adaptation should be the result of personalisation (controlled by the system) and customisation (controlled by the user) because these processes support behaviour change in different ways.
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