Personal-Public Displays: Motivating Behavior Change through Ambient Information and Social Pressure
Brian Y. Lim, Aubrey Shick, Chris G. Harrison · 2008
Our research investigates how public displays of personal information can be used to motivate behavi or change. We describe six characteristics that are important for such information displays to embody. These build on two well-established methods for motivating behavior: presenting pertinent informati on at the point-of-decision and leveraging social pres sure. To investigate how these personal-public displays c an be used to motivate behavior change we developed Pediluma, a wearable device with sensing and dynami c lighting capabilities. In particular, it tracks and visualizes the wearer's physical activity by changi ng the brightness of its display. We hypothesize that the public display of behavior and subsequent social pressures will motivate people to increase their physical activity as well as their awareness of it. We describe our curr ent user study design, and discuss possible generalizat ions of the work.