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Designing to persuade: the use of emotionin networked media
Ann Light*
Infomatics, School of Cognitive & Computing, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Available online 6 July 2004
Abstract
This commentary looks first at the paradigm shift taking place in analysis of people’s interactionswith digital products and services—from evaluating performance to researching experience—in linewith trends towardsthe connectivity, mobility anddomestication ofdevices. It then asks what impactthis shift has on our understanding of emotion and technology use; exploring the rise of ‘generative’situations, in particular when the producer of a networked service has different intentions from theuser’s and the stimulation of affect may be considered desirable. The author’s work analysing theemotional impact of the design of networked media is outlined. The paper concludes with somethoughts on the ethics of manipulation.
q
2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Keywords:
Networked media; Intention; Experience; Persuasion; Emotion; Website; Ethics
1. Introduction: what’s new about networked media?
I would like to place this discussion in the setting of technological development as awhole, since HCI is an applied science. My own interest is in the effect of design andlanguage upon the acceptability of networked media. This issue hinges on many emotionalaspects of behaviour and looks beyond performance (and using emotion as a tool toenhance it), to a new framework where emotions are deliberately generated in the serviceof the media producer to encourage interaction. AsPicard and Klein (2002)comment, thismanipulation is ethically complex and I will go on to discuss it.The work featured in the special issue, while referring to online communication, dealsin research terms primarily with stand-alone entities: whether the interface is a game-playing PC or a digital toy. But a significant change in the nature of people’s relations withtechnology has taken place in the move to an environment supporting networked digital
0953-5438/$ - see front matter
q
2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2004.06.007Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 729–738www.elsevier.com/locate/intcom*Tel.:
þ
44-1273-678393; fax:
þ
44-1273-671320.
E-mail address:
annl@sussex.ac.uk (A. Light).
media. Perhaps this change brings into question the very term ‘HCI’, but more importantlyfor us here, the change has been a journey from stand-alone units, from purchased softwareprovided by a small number of well-known players and from the questions addressed bythe field of CSCW, to a market where:
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the line between telephones and computers is blurred,
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people are using digital services that seamlessly link their home and work lives,
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‘application service providers’ are pondering ways of leasing software over the Web,and
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choices will be combined in ever more complex and interesting ways.
1.1. Producer proxies
Formerly, commercial interest in how a product was used tallied with the position of HCI researchers that performance was key—product sales were based on a reputation forgetting the job done. The research community may have differed in its emphasis from themanufacturer, with the former stressing the importance of adjusting the functionality to theuser and the latter expecting the user to adapt to the system; but both were operating withina performance paradigm—one thatPicard and Klein (2002)rightly attack as narrow.The only exception to this has been the field of games, where enjoyment andengagement are critical to success. Here academic interest has been limited, reflectingperhaps the belief that fun is too frivolous to research (except seeLaurel, 1990, 1991;Monk and Frohlich, 1999; Blythe et al., 2003). It is appropriate then, in breaking down thispreconception, that bothScheirer et al. (2002)andKlein et al. (2002)use this domain for
their research into affect.However, although the discussions in thePicard and Klein (2002)article move beyondthis performance-emphasising position to considering emotion as a profound and centralpart of the experience of being human, and attempt to deal with it on its own terms, theactual experimentation reported is still within the old HCI paradigm of eliminatingfrustration and improving performance, with its tradition in HCI’s roots in the cognitiveergonomics of critical systems.This does not fully recognise that there has been a change in how and where people arecoming into contact with machine interfaces and what lies behind the interface.Increasingly, in dealing with their domestic and professional digital paraphernalia, frompersonal digital assistants to portable computers to phones; in using online informationsources; and in feeding their own or other people’s data into them, people are connectingto other people, or software as a proxy for actual people ‘at the other end’ (Light andWakeman, 2001). The appropriate model for these online systems is not that of purchasedstand-alone kit designed to support the user as effectively as possible in what the ownerseeks to do. It is a digital service, often controlled in real-time at the other end by a more orless interventionist donor; often with the commercial interest of keeping the user engagedand prepared to return.I christened the software of these services ‘the producer’s proxy’ (Light,2001) where innetworked contexts it is standing in for the intentions of another set of people connectingin real-time to the user. The research I have conducted supports that definition because
A. Light / Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 729–738
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people are aware that in some activities—such as commercial transactions or politicaladdresses—another set of intentions exists. They are also aware that software is mediatingthese intentions. For instance, millions of websites are competing for a limited (thoughhuge) number of visitors and a large subset of these sites are designed to convince thevisitor to perform an action of the producer’s choice while they are on the site. I willdiscuss these points further below.
1.2. A new paradigm
The move to a range of activities taking place
through
digital interfaces, coupled withthe changing relationship between people and their technology—towards services leasedover a multitude of different gadgets—dramatically changes the value of emotionalaspects of users’ responses.While the performance-paradigm issues of efficiency and effectiveness remainimportant, a feeling of efficiency and effectiveness becomes even more so. Feelings of pleasure, contentment, excitement and satisfaction are taking on significance as acommercial imperative in the production of a new wave of digitalartefacts, just as has longbeen the case in games development. This new concern with emotion is not related toconsidering the whole person from the moral perspective of Picard and Klein (2002).Instead, the person is treated more holistically because this has been recognised as key inextending identification with brands, commitment to products and consumption of goods:a different imperative, but it leads to many of the same interests.As a consequence of the new importance of mood, ‘experience’ is replacing‘performance’ as the dominant paradigm among the new wave of designers anddevelopers who supplythe new wave of digital artefacts. ‘User experience teams’ combinetechnical, graphical and commercial staff. ‘Experience design’ has been adopted as theAIGA label for meetings and endorsed byShedroff (2001)in a popular practice book.‘Customer satisfaction’ has subsumed market intelligence at Microsoft.How has the HCI research community reacted? The confluence of these changes hasbeen little assessed either in practical or philosophical terms.
1.3. Generative vs reactive
Elsewhere, however, asPicard and Klein (2002)mention, the Stanford ‘Captology’movement have been looking at persuasive technologies (Fogg, 1999). I find the idea of technologies that can persuade too deterministic—it abnegates human responsibility. Butthe research, which looks at how persuasion is tackled and what tools are effective, is thebeginning of a research tradition into emotion in what I shall call a ‘generative’ rather than‘reactive’ mode. Does this sound as if we are in the terrain of marketing? Perhaps so, butthat is because now services are marketing themselves through use in a way that was neverpossible before. It is still well within the field of interaction design, and contributes to HCIif we are allowed to substitute ‘digital media’ for ‘computer’.My own interest in this has been what I have termed the symbolic aspects of the designof interactive components: what the design tells its users about the non-functional aspectsof the service and about their relationship with the service producer, such as whether to
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