Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The verb play is also closely related with entertainment. Play is more than fun
as stated by Stuart Brown (
2008
; Brown and Vaughan
2010
), who advocates that
play is deeply involved with human development and intelligence and affirms the
importance and need for healthy play throughout the human life cycle. While playing,
children use their senses to find out how things work and they can experiment by
themselves without fear. Playing is a powerful way to learn. It promotes curiosity,
creativity, self-esteem and social interaction since childhood.
As stated by Donald Norman (
2004
), positive affect arouses curiosity, engages
creativity, and makes the brain into an effective learning organism. Research works
in the field of psychology have shown that happiness facilitates creative thinking and
complex problem solving (Ashby et al.
1999
). Entertainment mechanisms can be
used to invoke positive emotions and consequently be exploited to promote education,
social relationships and behavior changes, as well as to increase productivity.
In recent years, modern society has evolved in many aspects, but people still
lack routines and behaviors that support and help the environment. Environmental
sustainability involves efforts such as monitoring the physical world's state and in-
forming individuals' personal choices in consumption and behavior (Woodruff and
Mankoff
2009
). Our aim is to study the creation and use of educational and persuasive
contextual-aware applications that, through users awareness concerning environmen-
tal problems, encourage them to adopt more appropriate behaviors in order to solve
these problems and contribute to environmental sustainability.
This chapter presents and discusses several game prototypes built to foster user
awareness, learning and behavior change mostly concerning environmental sustain-
ability, as it is a relevant matter affecting the whole world. Some of these prototypes
were developed in the scope of project DEAP (Developing Environmental Aware-
ness with Persuasive systems) and rely on persuasive technology and entertainment
techniques to provide the users with the appropriate messages and experiences that
stimulate them to take action in the real world.
4.2
Technologies for Behavior Change
Persuasive technology purposefully applies psychological principles of persuasion
(such as credibility, trust, reciprocity or authority) to interactive media, aiming at
changing users' attitudes and behaviors (Kort et al.
2007
). The term captology was
coined by BJ Fogg, and is derived from computers as persuasive technology (Fogg
2003
). It focuses on the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing
products created to change people's attitudes and behaviors. The collection of in-
fluence strategies is wide, ranging from Cialdini (
2007
) six strategies to more than
100 (Rhoads
2007
). It is clear that these influence strategies can be used as powerful
tools to increase the effectiveness of persuasive systems.
When applied to mobile applications, persuasive technology can have a stronger
persuasive effect, due to the just-in-time interaction ability (to intervene at the right
moments) (Fogg
2003
). Eckles and Fogg (
2007
) also mention that mobile phones
