Adjunct Publication of the 27th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization
This paper investigates how mobile persuasive system targeting African audience could be designed... more This paper investigates how mobile persuasive system targeting African audience could be designed and tailored to promote employee's commitment to the ideals, visions, and mission of an organization. We conduct a qualitative study with two categories of workers to uncover core factors that influence employee's attitudes to their jobs and map our findings to their matching social influence persuasive techniques. We propose that a persuasive system (PS) employing the social influence strategies could motivate workers towards acceptable positive pro-workplace behaviors and etiquette. The PS allow workers to compare their behaviors against set goals and acceptable standards, compete and compare performances with peers, view and respond to peers' activities, and receive recognition for accomplishing target tasks. The system ensures the security of worker's data via the authentication of login credentials while showing them a personalized persuasive display of essential workplace information. We present a prototype persuasive system called "PAULApp" for motivating pro-workplace behaviors and plans for evaluation. PAULApp was developed using the iterative design process and was informed by results from the user studies.
Proceedings of the Second African Conference for Human Computer Interaction: Thriving Communities
This research utilizes three of the social influence strategies (social learning, social comparis... more This research utilizes three of the social influence strategies (social learning, social comparison, and recognition) of the Persuasive System Design (PSD) to design and personalize persuasive system intervention intended to encourage users to adjust their behavior towards waste management and protect their immediate environment. The system takes into consideration, users' privacy while providing them with a personalized persuasive display of their performance report. It offers users opportunities to learn from other users' performances, compares their performance with others, as well as receive recognition for performing a target behavior. This, in turn, motivates users to change/improve their attitude towards waste management and promote a clean environment. More importantly, we show how persuasive systems can be designed to provide a personalized display of individual performances relative to others while preserving users' identities.
Background: ‘Herd immunity’ or ‘community immunity’ refers to the reduced risk of infection among... more Background: ‘Herd immunity’ or ‘community immunity’ refers to the reduced risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population through the presence and proximity of immune individuals. Recent studies suggest that improving understanding of community immunity may increase intentions to get vaccinated.Objective: We aimed to design a web application about community immunity and optimize it based on viewers’ cognitive and emotional responses.Methods: Our multidisciplinary team developed a web application about community immunity to communicate epidemiological evidence in a personalized way. In our application, people build their own community by creating an avatar representing themselves and 8 other avatars representing people around them; for example, their family or coworkers. The application integrates these avatars in a 2-minute visualization showing how different parameters (e.g., vaccine coverage, contact within communities) influence community immunity. We predefined c...
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global health crisis that affects many aspects of h... more BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global health crisis that affects many aspects of human lives. In the absence of vaccines and antivirals, several behavioural change and policy initiatives, such as physical distancing, have been implemented to control the spread of the coronavirus. Social media data can reveal public perceptions toward how governments and health agencies across the globe are handling the pandemic, as well as the impact of the disease on people regardless of their geographic locations in line with various factors that hinder or facilitate the efforts to control the spread of the pandemic globally. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people globally using social media data. METHODS We apply natural language processing (NLP) and thematic analysis to understand public opinions, experiences, and issues with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic using social media data. First, we collect over 47 million COVID-19-related ...
Background Herd immunity or community immunity refers to the reduced risk of infection among susc... more Background Herd immunity or community immunity refers to the reduced risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population through the presence and proximity of immune individuals. Recent studies suggest that improving the understanding of community immunity may increase intentions to get vaccinated. Objective This study aims to design a web application about community immunity and optimize it based on users’ cognitive and emotional responses. Methods Our multidisciplinary team developed a web application about community immunity to communicate epidemiological evidence in a personalized way. In our application, people build their own community by creating an avatar representing themselves and 8 other avatars representing people around them, for example, their family or coworkers. The application integrates these avatars in a 2-min visualization showing how different parameters (eg, vaccine coverage, and contact within communities) influence community immunity. We predefine...
Internet forums and public social media, such as online healthcare forums, provide a convenient c... more Internet forums and public social media, such as online healthcare forums, provide a convenient channel for users (people/patients) concerned about health issues to discuss and share information with each other. In late December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus (infection from which results in the disease named COVID-19) was reported, and, due to the rapid spread of the virus in other parts of the world, the World Health Organization declared a state of emergency. In this paper, we used automated extraction of COVID-19–related discussions from social media and a natural language process (NLP) method based on topic modeling to uncover various issues related to COVID-19 from public opinions. Moreover, we also investigate how to use LSTM recurrent neural network for sentiment classification of COVID-19 comments. Our findings shed light on the importance of using public opinions and suitable computational techniques to understand issues surrounding COVID-19 and to guide related ...
This study aims to investigate how to process and persuade the intake of a new dietary. Persuasiv... more This study aims to investigate how to process and persuade the intake of a new dietary. Persuasive messages were sent to 30 diabetic patients to remind them of the need of taking the new dietary regime regularly. We produced flour from tiger nuts and blended it with yellow cassava flour at different levels of substitution. The flour blends were analyzed for their functional, proximate, anti-nutritional and microbial properties using standard analytical methods for ten weeks. For patients to maintain regular dietary intake, sensory properties of the new diet produced from the different flour blends were also determined by the patients.
The fact that individuals may react differently toward persuasive strategies gave birth to a shif... more The fact that individuals may react differently toward persuasive strategies gave birth to a shift in persuasive technology (PT) design from the one-size-fits-all traditional approach to the individualized approach which conforms to individuals’ preferences. Given that learners’ gender, age, and cognitive level can affect their response to different learning instructions, it is given primacy of place in persuasive educational technology (PET) design. However, the effect of gender, age, and cognitive ability on learners’ susceptibility to persuasive strategies did not receive the right attention in the extant literature. To close this gap, we carried out an empirical study among 461 participants to investigate whether learners’ gender, age, and cognitive ability significantly affect learners’ susceptibility to three key persuasive strategies (social learning, reward, and trustworthiness) in PETs. The results of a repeated measure analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) revealed that people w...
Background Exergames have attracted the interest of academics, practitioners, and designers, in d... more Background Exergames have attracted the interest of academics, practitioners, and designers, in domains as diverse as health, human-computer interaction, psychology, and information technology. This is primarily because exergames can make the exercise experience more enjoyable and entertaining, and in turn, can increase exercise levels. Despite the many benefits of exergames, they suffer from retention problems. Thus, the objective of this article was to review theories and game elements that have been empirically examined or employed in an attempt to make exergames more motivating so people engage in sustained physical activity (duration of physical activity) in a repeating pattern over time (frequency of physical activity). Methodology A literature search and narrative review were conducted. Results Five major theories and elements were prevalent in the exergaming literature: (1) self-determination theory, (2) gamification, (3) competition and cooperation, (4) situational interest...
Adjunct Publication of the 27th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization
This paper investigates how mobile persuasive system targeting African audience could be designed... more This paper investigates how mobile persuasive system targeting African audience could be designed and tailored to promote employee's commitment to the ideals, visions, and mission of an organization. We conduct a qualitative study with two categories of workers to uncover core factors that influence employee's attitudes to their jobs and map our findings to their matching social influence persuasive techniques. We propose that a persuasive system (PS) employing the social influence strategies could motivate workers towards acceptable positive pro-workplace behaviors and etiquette. The PS allow workers to compare their behaviors against set goals and acceptable standards, compete and compare performances with peers, view and respond to peers' activities, and receive recognition for accomplishing target tasks. The system ensures the security of worker's data via the authentication of login credentials while showing them a personalized persuasive display of essential workplace information. We present a prototype persuasive system called "PAULApp" for motivating pro-workplace behaviors and plans for evaluation. PAULApp was developed using the iterative design process and was informed by results from the user studies.
Proceedings of the Second African Conference for Human Computer Interaction: Thriving Communities
This research utilizes three of the social influence strategies (social learning, social comparis... more This research utilizes three of the social influence strategies (social learning, social comparison, and recognition) of the Persuasive System Design (PSD) to design and personalize persuasive system intervention intended to encourage users to adjust their behavior towards waste management and protect their immediate environment. The system takes into consideration, users' privacy while providing them with a personalized persuasive display of their performance report. It offers users opportunities to learn from other users' performances, compares their performance with others, as well as receive recognition for performing a target behavior. This, in turn, motivates users to change/improve their attitude towards waste management and promote a clean environment. More importantly, we show how persuasive systems can be designed to provide a personalized display of individual performances relative to others while preserving users' identities.
Background: ‘Herd immunity’ or ‘community immunity’ refers to the reduced risk of infection among... more Background: ‘Herd immunity’ or ‘community immunity’ refers to the reduced risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population through the presence and proximity of immune individuals. Recent studies suggest that improving understanding of community immunity may increase intentions to get vaccinated.Objective: We aimed to design a web application about community immunity and optimize it based on viewers’ cognitive and emotional responses.Methods: Our multidisciplinary team developed a web application about community immunity to communicate epidemiological evidence in a personalized way. In our application, people build their own community by creating an avatar representing themselves and 8 other avatars representing people around them; for example, their family or coworkers. The application integrates these avatars in a 2-minute visualization showing how different parameters (e.g., vaccine coverage, contact within communities) influence community immunity. We predefined c...
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global health crisis that affects many aspects of h... more BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global health crisis that affects many aspects of human lives. In the absence of vaccines and antivirals, several behavioural change and policy initiatives, such as physical distancing, have been implemented to control the spread of the coronavirus. Social media data can reveal public perceptions toward how governments and health agencies across the globe are handling the pandemic, as well as the impact of the disease on people regardless of their geographic locations in line with various factors that hinder or facilitate the efforts to control the spread of the pandemic globally. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people globally using social media data. METHODS We apply natural language processing (NLP) and thematic analysis to understand public opinions, experiences, and issues with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic using social media data. First, we collect over 47 million COVID-19-related ...
Background Herd immunity or community immunity refers to the reduced risk of infection among susc... more Background Herd immunity or community immunity refers to the reduced risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population through the presence and proximity of immune individuals. Recent studies suggest that improving the understanding of community immunity may increase intentions to get vaccinated. Objective This study aims to design a web application about community immunity and optimize it based on users’ cognitive and emotional responses. Methods Our multidisciplinary team developed a web application about community immunity to communicate epidemiological evidence in a personalized way. In our application, people build their own community by creating an avatar representing themselves and 8 other avatars representing people around them, for example, their family or coworkers. The application integrates these avatars in a 2-min visualization showing how different parameters (eg, vaccine coverage, and contact within communities) influence community immunity. We predefine...
Internet forums and public social media, such as online healthcare forums, provide a convenient c... more Internet forums and public social media, such as online healthcare forums, provide a convenient channel for users (people/patients) concerned about health issues to discuss and share information with each other. In late December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus (infection from which results in the disease named COVID-19) was reported, and, due to the rapid spread of the virus in other parts of the world, the World Health Organization declared a state of emergency. In this paper, we used automated extraction of COVID-19–related discussions from social media and a natural language process (NLP) method based on topic modeling to uncover various issues related to COVID-19 from public opinions. Moreover, we also investigate how to use LSTM recurrent neural network for sentiment classification of COVID-19 comments. Our findings shed light on the importance of using public opinions and suitable computational techniques to understand issues surrounding COVID-19 and to guide related ...
This study aims to investigate how to process and persuade the intake of a new dietary. Persuasiv... more This study aims to investigate how to process and persuade the intake of a new dietary. Persuasive messages were sent to 30 diabetic patients to remind them of the need of taking the new dietary regime regularly. We produced flour from tiger nuts and blended it with yellow cassava flour at different levels of substitution. The flour blends were analyzed for their functional, proximate, anti-nutritional and microbial properties using standard analytical methods for ten weeks. For patients to maintain regular dietary intake, sensory properties of the new diet produced from the different flour blends were also determined by the patients.
The fact that individuals may react differently toward persuasive strategies gave birth to a shif... more The fact that individuals may react differently toward persuasive strategies gave birth to a shift in persuasive technology (PT) design from the one-size-fits-all traditional approach to the individualized approach which conforms to individuals’ preferences. Given that learners’ gender, age, and cognitive level can affect their response to different learning instructions, it is given primacy of place in persuasive educational technology (PET) design. However, the effect of gender, age, and cognitive ability on learners’ susceptibility to persuasive strategies did not receive the right attention in the extant literature. To close this gap, we carried out an empirical study among 461 participants to investigate whether learners’ gender, age, and cognitive ability significantly affect learners’ susceptibility to three key persuasive strategies (social learning, reward, and trustworthiness) in PETs. The results of a repeated measure analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) revealed that people w...
Background Exergames have attracted the interest of academics, practitioners, and designers, in d... more Background Exergames have attracted the interest of academics, practitioners, and designers, in domains as diverse as health, human-computer interaction, psychology, and information technology. This is primarily because exergames can make the exercise experience more enjoyable and entertaining, and in turn, can increase exercise levels. Despite the many benefits of exergames, they suffer from retention problems. Thus, the objective of this article was to review theories and game elements that have been empirically examined or employed in an attempt to make exergames more motivating so people engage in sustained physical activity (duration of physical activity) in a repeating pattern over time (frequency of physical activity). Methodology A literature search and narrative review were conducted. Results Five major theories and elements were prevalent in the exergaming literature: (1) self-determination theory, (2) gamification, (3) competition and cooperation, (4) situational interest...
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