On the development of persuasive systems: A framework for designing and evaluating behavior change support systems and its applicability for e-Health: Dissertation

A growing number of information and communication technologies are being developed to support a change in users' attitudes and behaviour or both i.e. to persuade people. In the development of these kinds of systems, persuasion strategies and principles play an important role. They are classical principles that are found to have an influence on attitudes and behaviours. There already exist several approaches to the design and evaluation of behaviour change support systems. However, there is a need for a more comprehensive framework which describes how the persuasion principles can be implemented; that is, how to transform them into software requirements and functionalities. It would also be important to address the question of how to integrate persuasive design approaches into systems development. The objective of this doctoral thesis is to provide a framework for designing and evaluating behaviour change support systems and evaluating the utility of the developed model by using it for its purpose in an e-Health context, in particular in the early stages of systems development and in the evaluation of existing systems. This doctoral thesis applies a design science research approach which aims at designing new and novel artefacts, constructs, intended to solve identified organizational problems. The construct is a conceptual model based on literature analysis, and the evaluations are conducted using a case study approach. This doctoral thesis describes the key theories behind the development of persuasive systems and proposes an innovative construction, the Persuasive Systems Design model. It also evaluates the practical applicability of the model in three case studies. The findings show that the model can be successfully applied during the user requirements analysis and concept design phases in order to identify new potential persuasive functionalities and analysing persuasive functionalities of an existing product. The main contribution of this doctoral thesis is participation in the development of a conceptual model for designing and evaluating behaviour change support systems.