Oulu Advanced Research on Service and Information Systems

Research

The OASIS research unit studies how software and information systems can best serve people to perform professional, personal, and other activities. We believe that motivating, encouraging and persuasive information systems will be drivers for future changes in global business and information technology. We seek to produce new knowledge and insight into the three roles information technology plays in modern society: as a transformer, innovation accelerator, and humanizer (Oinas-Kukkonen and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2013).

Transformer, innovation accelerator and humanizer

Modern information systems and technology have the power to transform organizations, businesses, industries, and economies; to transform the very skills that are required of us for both work and our everyday lives; even to change the way we think about people.

This transformation is also changing the way innovations and technologies are being created; new platforms for open innovation, crowdsourcing, and other new means for seeking innovations will become ever more prevalent, and ecosystems related to them will need increased scientific and pragmatic attention.

Information systems themselves will turn into humanized information and communication technologies through which radical changes in social phenomena will take place.

In this transition, a deeper understanding of user behaviors is needed. Even more so, persuasive design will play a pivotal role in future innovation ecosystems, as people who are not on one’s payroll become increasingly important to one’s success. Those people need to be motivated, encouraged, and incentivized. In one word, the systems offered for them must be persuasive.

Current research focus

Our research unit focuses on using Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) to create Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS) in various domains. Domains include healthcare, assistive care, sustainability, well-being, education, mentoring, and other emerging areas. We use the developed systems to produce results that aim to refine persuasive techniques and define their contributions to user experience, technology adoption, and behavior change.

Persuasive Systems Design

Persuasive technology aims to influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors through technology. The PSD model (Oinas-Kukkonen and Harjumaa, 2009) is used in our unit for designing, evaluating, and researching persuasive systems. The model includes three phases to build a system capable of changing behavior without manipulation or coercion:

1. Understanding the Key issues behind persuasive systems

Our model defines seven postulates that need to be addressed when designing or evaluating persuasive systems.

1. Information technology is never neutral.
2. People like their views about the world to be organized and consistent.
3. Direct and indirect routes are key persuasion strategies.
4. Persuasion is often incremental.
5. Persuasion through persuasive systems should always be open.
6. Persuasive systems should aim at unobtrusiveness.
7. Persuasive systems should aim at being both useful and easy to use.