Example Of Persuasive Design Essay

A persuasive technology is any type of interacting computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or behaviors. This is a kind of mass communication which task is to convince and appeal someone to take a clear position, act principally and rationally justify the certain views. Persuasive technology functions in media, technology, public relations, advertising, political marketing and propaganda. This requires the ability to perform professional work in the newspaper, radio, television, Internet portals, news services, during election campaigns, etc. However, the entire concept of persuasive technologies is not about manipulating, but showing the audience the way they should act. The goal of persuasive technologies is to make audience make the right decision thought understanding the process of audience’s decision-making and using the tolls for encourage making the decision.
Fogg states that the behavior of some technical users can be manage by implementation of eight essential steps which present a logical scheme of supporting the decision-making process. Technologies can persuade people to stop smoking, save environment, live in peace, self-develop, and behave carefully by the means of specific motivation action implemented on people and unobtrusive motivation.
Brenda Miranda claims that even several years ago people used to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol causing car accidents because of the distraction. Or simply by eating while driving people loose attention and then can’t control over the driving process. Nowadays with the technological widespread people are very engaged in texting and spending time in social medial web sites which are even more distracting activities than eating, drinking or talking on phone while driving. Due to the big number of tragedies happening because of such activities while driving, some states in the USA restricted texting and talking on the cell phone while driving. The authors revealed that the texting epidemic behind the wheel is not very much influenced by the law. They suggested using some technique to reduce this deadly behavior. Fogg’s behavioral model proposes that three elements must be present for a behavior to occur: motivation, ability, and a trigger while the behavior will not occur if one of these points is missed. Thus, the drivers should be motivated to change their behavior by media and tool elements. The media element was a documentary film which enabled the immediate observe the interaction between the cause and the effect. The tool element included everyday messages to drivers to even empower the impact of the video. As the result of such actions, the participants stopped texting while driving and rated the video used in the experiment as a very useful one. In addition, those participants, who hardly ever used text messages while driving a car, stopped texting while driving at all.
The video on a persuasive technology presents the application to help curb the habit of texting and driving. It allows users to send automatic text message replies while driving and automatically enables itself using the smartphone's GPS when the car is traveling over 25 miles per hour which decreases the chance of injury in dozens of times. This approach does not seem to be very unobtrusive, but in some cases it is even more efficient than usual persuasive technology and motivation. It does not allow using the GPS that may cause people simply delete it, since not everyone considers it as a helpful feature. Thus, understanding and helping to make out a decision by giving examples and reminding about the issue permanently is more efficient and has a greater and longer impact.
While studding this topic I’ve met with an assumption that a persuasive design is manipulation. But it is not making users something they are not willing to do, but supporting a healthy decision and motivation to inculcate the right habit. However, the use of this technology may cause in additional problem whether the designers are willing to get revenue from the users. For instance, motivating people to buy on the web site, different kinds of unhealthy propaganda are among them.