Personalizing and Adapting Behaviour Change Systems

旨在激励人们采取对他们和他们的社区有益的行为和行动的互动系统正吸引着政府、从业者和研究人员的注意。劝说技术(PTS)是一种互动系统，旨在激发人们期望的行为改变。尽管对PT的兴趣和投资与日俱增，但目前的PT设计框架面临着一个重大限制：它们基于一刀切的方法，因此产生的PT不能个性化以适合目标用户(S)。说服性技术中的个性化是具有挑战性的，因为激发用户的特定行为或行动需要考虑到广泛的个人和依赖于背景的因素。这项研究的主要目标是开发、评估和改进新颖的多维机制(同时考虑多种因素)，用于个性化和适应说服技术，使其适合个人用户，并提高其在促进积极行为方面的有效性。首先，我们将使用通过用户研究收集的显性和隐性用户行为数据，使用交互日志和各种行为情境中的生理反应，来开发用户对不同说服策略的反应的多维个性化模型。其次，为了评估模型在不同说服情境下的有效性，我们将应用这些模型来设计、开发和评估针对三个技术领域(数字游戏、移动和社会计算)和两个应用领域(健康/健康和安全/安保)的新的模型驱动的个性化和自适应说服系统。说服系统将针对不同的受众，包括处于危险和服务不足的加拿大人口：非洲新斯科舍省人和土著人、老年人和年轻人。这项研究的主要结果将是：1)开发新颖的多维机制来个性化和适应说服系统，以及2)这些机制在设计和评估几个个性化的说服系统时的应用，这些机制激励和帮助用户朝着有益的行为。总体而言，这项研究的成功完成将导致适应性系统设计领域的技术进步。我们的创新有可能在加拿大电脑游戏行业内带来经济效益，为更好的游戏设计提供信息。最后，我们的工作纳入了更广泛的社会公益自适应和智能系统框架：它可以通过针对几个问题领域(包括安全/安保和健康/健康)来改善加拿大人的生活。这项工作可以帮助每个人，但也可以针对特定的、处于危险之中的加拿大人和服务不足的人群(例如，非洲新斯科舍省人、土著人、老年人)。

Interactive systems that aim to motivate people to adopt behaviours and actions that are beneficial for them and their community are attracting the attention of governments, practitioners, and researchers. Persuasive Technologies (PTs) are interactive systems designed to motivate desirable behaviour change. Despite the growing interest and investments into PTs, current PT design frameworks suffer a major limitation: They are based on the one-size-fits-all approach and hence resulting PTs are not personalized to be appropriate for the target user(s). Personalization in persuasive technologies is challenging, since motivating users for a particular behaviour or action needs to take into account a wide range of individual and context-dependent factors. The primary objective of this research is to develop, evaluate, and refine novel multi-dimensional mechanisms (that considers multiple factors simultaneously) for personalizing and adapting persuasive technologies to make them appropriate for individual users and increase their efficacy at promoting positive behaviour. First, we will develop multidimensional personalization models of user's responses to distinct persuasive strategies using both explicit and implicit user behaviour data gathered via user studies, using interaction log, and physiological responses across various behaviour contexts. Second, to evaluate the efficacy of the models across various persuasion contexts, we will apply the models to design, develop, and evaluate new model-driven personalized and adaptive persuasive systems targeting three technical domains (digital games, mobile, and social computing) and two application areas (health/wellness and safety/security). The persuasive systems will be targeted at diverse audience including at-risk and underserved Canadian populations: African Nova Scotians and Aboriginals, older adults, and youths.The primary outcomes of this research will be: 1) The development of novel multi-dimensional mechanisms for personalizing and adapting persuasive systems, and 2) applications of these mechanisms in designing and evaluating several personalized persuasive systems that motivate and assist users towards beneficial behaviours. Overall, successful completion of this research will lead to technological advances in the area of adaptive systems design. Our innovations have the potential for economic benefits within the Canadian computer games industry, to inform better game designs. Finally, our work inscribes in the broader framework of adaptive and intelligent systems for social good: it can improve the lives of Canadians by targeting several problem domains (including safety/security and health/wellness). This work can help everyone, but can also target specific, at-risk Canadians and under-served populations (e.g., African Nova Scotians, Aboriginals, older adults).