The Activated Motivation Toolkit: Towards Self-Determined Self-Improvement Technology

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Everyday, millions of people use technologies like a fitbit, smartwatch, or smartphone to support self-improvement. These devices and their associated apps have become both inexpensive and pervasive; they monitor our shopping habits, physical activity, and ecological footprint and visualize that data to help us reflect on our limitations, to set and make progress towards goals, and recognize achievements. The potential impacts of these technologies are immense; to improve our finances, to educate ourselves and develop new skills, and to improve our health and the health of our planet. However, research has cast doubt on their effectiveness. That is, people tend to lose motivation over time and fail to meet their personal goals. To address these shortcomings, I will explore how we can use established theories of human motivation to create technologies that motivate change, provoke self-reflection and persistence, and promote our health and well-being. The long-term objective of this research program is to enable Human-Computer Interaction researchers and practitioners to deeply integrate the concepts of Self-Determination Theory - an extensively validated macro-theory from psychology that describes human motivation and well-being - into the technologies we use today, and to shape the design of emerging technologies like augmented reality. The proposed research program will be the first to demonstrate how activated motivation, the use of text, images, and audio to prime individuals to be more receptive, engaged, and persistent during self-improvement tasks, can be used to make self-improvement technologies more effective. To do so, this research program will engage in an interconnected series of short-term goals:  1) a series of laboratory studies will examine how activated motivation can be integrated into common user interface elements (e.g., icons, audio) and software features (e.g., fitness or activity tracking apps) while qualitative methods are used to develop an understanding of when it is most effective; 2) a series of field studies will demonstrate efficacy and feasibility in practice through prototype development in domains like fitness, nutrition, and climate change, and across a variety of devices, including smartphone, smartwatch, and augmented reality; and 3) an Activated Motivation Toolkit will be developed and shared with the research community and industry partners which includes working examples and tasks from the experimental studies. Together, these research activities will build on established theories from psychology to improve software interfaces for self-improvement, and ultimately, the health and well-being of Canadians. Through this research, students will receive training in fundamental and applied research methods in human-computer interaction, design, and qualitative and quantitative research methods.  These are critical skills for a variety of industries, including software engineering, healthcare and education.