WhatsApp! Does Culture Matter to Persuasive System Design and Brand Loyalty?

The traditional paradigm prioritizes local culture in application design; however, popular applications with persuasive systems design (PSD) like WhatsApp appeal to a global audience beyond local cultural attributes. The purpose of this study is to test the moderating role of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on PSD and the relationship to loyalty in the context of WhatsApp. By employing an online survey, data were collected from the Netherlands, Germany, KSA, and Malaysia (N = 488). Using regression moderation analyses, the hypotheses were tested. Findings suggest that only two cultural dimensions, namely power distance and individualism, have a moderating role: power distance in Germany, and individualism in both KSA and Malaysia. This implies that managers must consider the possible influence of some cultural dimensions on loyalty. The study contributes to the literature by focusing on smartphone apps in countries with varying cross-cultural dimensions scores and utilizing the user’s perspective instead of the designer’s perspective.

Persuasive Systems for Energy: Cartography of Design Spaces and Proposition of the UP+ Framework

This article reviews surveys, design spaces, and frameworks related to the design of persuasive interactive systems, with a particular focus on energy. We first propose a cartography of these conceptual tools. Most previous work focuses on persuasion principles but is difficult to apply for the software design and engineering of persuasive interactive systems. As a result, we propose UP+, a new framework that synthetizes and revisits existing surveys, design spaces, and frameworks from the software engineering perspective of persuasive interactive systems. Cet article propose un état de l’art d’espaces de conception et d’études pour les systèmes interactifs persuasifs, en particulier dans le domaine de l’énergie. Nous établissons et proposons une cartographie des principes de persuasion et des caractéristiques des systèmes persuasifs captées par ces outils. Nous observons que la plupart de ces outils sont difficiles à exploiter pour l’ingénierie de ces systèmes. Aussi, à partir de cette cartographie, nous proposons le framework UP+ qui synthétise et revisite ces outils d’un point de vue de l’ingénierie des systèmes interactifs persuasifs.

Assessment of Persuasive Design Principles in E-Commerce Applications Based on Users’ Reviews

Different e-commerce applications aim to utilize different techniques and methods to enhance their usability and persuasive design experience. Persuasive design persuades users to use an application. Users also review the applications they use and provide comments based on their experiences. Therefore, this study aims to examine that to what extent the principles of the persuasive systems design (PSD) model have been implemented in a number of e-commerce applications in Saudi Arabia based on user reviews. Users’ reviews have been extracted using Appbot tool. Filtering and categorizing the collected users’ reviews took place before analyzing the data. The filtering and categorization were based on PSD model. The results demonstrate which principles of the PSD model are highly used in the selected applications based on users’ reviews. Tailoring, tunneling, and reductions principles have been reported to be positively utilized and implemented by the selected applications. Moreover, the findings report different users’ reviews on rewards and social supports principles.

Aiding Users in Green IS Adoption with Persuasive Systems Design

Green information systems (IS) is a research domain that contributes to finding solutions for fostering environmental behavior in individuals, organizations, and communities. So far, researching Green IS for individual users has been less abundant and requires more insight. Users’ engagement with technologies start from adoption. Green IS challenges users to modify their lifestyles in order to achieve sustainable behavior patterns. This article is focused on persuasive Green IS, which have in-built features to convince users to modify their lifestyles and to improve technology adoption intention. In the theoretical background, main concepts, especially sustainable behavior, Green IS, IS adoption, persuasive systems, and persuasive systems design (PSD) model are presented. In this article, we analyzed three studies that focused on individual sustainable behavior change with persuasive Green IS. Overviews of these studies are presented and the studies were analyzed as a whole. The reviewed studies suggest that the PSD model has a high potential for becoming a tool for Green IS enhancement. The key themes identified from the studies bring value to both academics and practitioners, as well as suggest directions for researching the individual behavior change with persuasive Green IS in the future.

mHealth Apps as Effective Persuasive Health Technology: Contextualizing the “Necessary” Functionalities

Persuasive health technology (PHT) is any technology purposely designed to influence, reinforce, change, or shape health-related attitudes or behaviors. Behavioral interventions can be developed for the purpose of maintaining or improving a person’s health status. Delivering behavioral interventions via PHTs is a promising approach for encouraging healthy behaviors among individuals and populations. Important attributes of all PHTs include their functionalities. A functionality refers to any useful features, functions, capabilities, or technologies associated with computer hardware or software. Creating effective PHTs requires a deliberate selection of appropriate functionalities for supporting specific behavioral interventions. The number and types of functionalities necessary to create an effective PHT will be specific to the context of each project, influenced by project objectives, stakeholder goals, behavioral interventions, and a variety of real-world constraints. Selecting appropriate functionalities can be challenging. Fortunately, there are frameworks and models developed specifically for guiding the design of PHTs. The Persuasive Systems Design model describes 4 categories, and 28 design principles for creating effective persuasive interventions. These same design principles could also be useful for guiding the selection of appropriate functionalities.

Designing Socially-Aware Persuasive Systems: a Proposed Framework

Every designer wants their computer systems design to be used by their target audiences. However, the lack of formal support from the persuasive design approaches often leads their projects to fail. In this work we propose a framework with methods, artifacts, tools and steps as a guide to design persua-sive technologies, drawing on the socially- aware design perspective. A case study briefly presented illustrates the use of the framework. Results suggest potential benefits of the proposed framework.