Climate Stories, or how designing a mobile phone app helped me learn about climate psychology (Part I — A soup with three ingredients)
This story is part of a mini-blog series showcasing my MSc dissertation in Human-Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London, which helped me position myself as a UX professional with a passion for Tech for Good. This project was awarded a distinction mark in 2021.
INTRODUCTION
Just over a year ago, I pressed the ‘send’ button in the online submission area for MSc final projects in Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID). I let out a sigh of relief. Clumsily titled, “The role of persuasive technology in breaking the socially constructed silence surrounding the subject of climate change”, the project was the backbreaking work of my academic life, engulfing me for many months of 2020, amid the pandemic. Later, I was astonished and honoured to receive a distinction grade and an Outstanding Project Prize from my alma mater, the Department of Computer Science at City, University of London.
Since then, I have landed my first ever gig in tech and am now happily working as a UX designer. Shameless showcasing of my MCs project at interviews has undoubtedly helped me get my foot through the door.
But who, other than me and my proud parents, cares what accolades I’ve received? What I really want is for my work to be useful to someone else. So, the purpose of this blog mini-series is to bring my project out in the open for anyone with an interest in UX, Human-computer interaction design, persuasive technology or climate psychology.
Within the confines of a blog, I can only offer a simplified whistle-stop tour of this work. If you would like to find out more, feel free to comment here or drop me a line via Linkedin or email.
(Refer to ***Note 1*** at the bottom of this post for further clarifications).
It all began with a book
The MSc course at City permitted students to choose their own project topics, as long as these were firmly based in the field of Human-Computer Interaction design or research. But as a newbie in tech, where on earth would I start? I was like a kid in a toy store, darting around from one idea to the next, the next shiniest thing catching my attention.
Then I read a book that had nothing to do with tech or HCID.
Published in 2015 by the Norwegian psychologist and climate change campaigner Per Espen Stoknes, the book tackles the puzzling phenomenon of the silence and denial surrounding the subject of climate change in our daily lives, despite overwhelming evidence that climate change will have a catastrophic effect on our own future. It digs deep into the workings of the human mind to explain how our coping mechanisms, developed over millennia, are now working against us and shutting us down when we face the complex problem of climate change. Immensely influential, this book is one of the pillars of the relatively new domain of climate psychology.
Unlike some of the book’s notable predecessors (such as George Marshall’s “Don’t Even Think About It”), it goes a step further and offers a punchy classification system — the ‘5 Ds’ or barriers to climate change action: Distance, Doom, Dissonance, Denial and iDentity, as well as simple but effective solutions (I prefer to call them ‘heuristics’ or ‘rules of thumb’) to overcome these barriers:
1) “Social. They [the solutions] use the power of social networks.
2) Supportive. They employ frames that support the message with positive emotions [using positive framings].
3) Simple. They make climate-friendly behaviours easy and convenient.
4) Story-based. They use the power of stories to create meaning and community.
5) Signals. They use indicators for feedback on societal response.”
Enter persuasive technology
Around that time, I came across a set of lecture notes from my MSc class on Evaluating Interactive Systems, led by Professor Stephanie Wilson (or Steph, as she is known to her students). Introducing the subject of persuasive technology, the notes were not required for our exams, but I read them anyway.
Within just a few PDF pages, I was hooked. The more I read on the topic, the more it became apparent to me that climate psychology and persuasive technology methods had a lot in common (more on this below). It wasn’t just a lightbulb moment — it was a disco ball moment!
Before long, I found myself on the doorstep of Steph’s office, applying to be her supervisee. And so, the deal was sealed. I was going to make my project about persuasive technology and climate psychology.
Wait, what is persuasive technology?
This is a hot topic right now, what with the recent Facebook whistleblower news and a refreshed fervency of public attention paid to the workings of social media giants. The case of Facebook — which incorporates a multitude of persuasive technology methods within a framework whose ethics is debatable — deserves many academic studies in its own right. Indeed, I have met researchers at my alma mater who had been writing entire PhD theses about it. So, the little ol’ me is happy to leave that quagmire to those who know what they are talking about.
Instead, let’s go a few levels down in simplicity. This is the world occupied by Fitbit, quitting smoking apps and the like — the world of the ‘classic’ persuasive tech.
Here is a scenario to help explain the basics of how persuasive technology works in practice.
Scenario: A simple persuasive app
Bowser is a compulsive bully. He knows that this is A Bad Thing, but he just can’t seem to get it under control — he is compelled by his old habits to keep on bullying. So, he goes to Google Play Store and downloads an app called ‘No More Bullying’ on his phone.
Using the app for the first time, Bowser is taken through an intro sequence where the designers of the app walk him through what the app is for, what the app is going to do to help him, and how it is going to do so. Bowser is able to revisit the intro again at any point.
Bowser then proceeds to use the app, which will guide him through setting up a schedule of daily check-ins, pop-up reminders, and offer him motivational stories, as well as an access to a community of supportive ex-bullies.
It’s all about ethics
Persuasive tech should be a response to a real user’s goal to alter their own behaviour in order to achieve a specific goal. The goal can be simple (such as wanting to recycle more) or complex (such as wanting to build and maintain a meaningful network of social connections). However, in order to earn the title of true persuasive tech, the technology must remain ethical at all times. So, none of that coercion, addiction or dark patterns stuff, please.
In the above scenario, the ‘No More Bullying’ app is transparent to the user (Bowser) from the start about the motivations of its creators and about how it intends to help the user support their behavioural change goal (quitting bullying).
In his book ‘Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do’, the US sociologist B. J. Fogg dedicates an entire chapter to the ethics of persuasive technology, defining seven steps to ensure that persuasive design remains ethical at all times. The steps involve considering all of the stakeholders in this technology (its designers and users, but also others who are likely to be affected by it) and evaluating what each stakeholder has to gain or lose due to the existence of this technology. It is not a tick box exercise but a continuous process that should be integrated into the design and the life span of the technology.
The practicalities: the Persuasive Systems Design Framework
B. J. Fogg is arguably the most prominent voice in the field of persuasive tech, outlining as many as 42 principles of persuasive technology and serving as its champion through his work with Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab.
But it’s all well and good knowing the 42 principles by heart, yet quite another applying them into practice.
UX designers and researchers often rely on the so-called frameworks — in other words, practical guides or methods — to structure their workflow and to ensure that their processes are consistent, optimised and up to the latest industry standard. You have probably heard of the Double Diamond and the User-Centred Design Framework; there are many others commonly used in the industry. Persuasive tech is no different — here, too, specialists have created several frameworks to guide design teams in making the real world persuasive tech products consistently and ethically.
Created in 2009, one such framework is Persuasive Systems Design (PSD for short) by the Finnish duo Harri Oinas-Kukkonen and Marja Harjumaa.
The duo split their suggested persuasive design process into three distinct steps:
1) Understanding key issues behind persuasive systems
In other words, the foundations and ethics of persuasive tech — as I’ve briefly outlined above.
2) Analysing the persuasion context
It is essential for the design team to carry out this exercise before embarking on the design of the persuasive technology, as well as during and after this process, by asking themselves the following questions:
- Who is driving the design and why? This is usually the designer and the stakeholders, and can and should include the intended users. (The Intent)
- How, where and by whom is the technology going to be used? (The Event)
- How is the persuasion delivered — is it through reason and intelligence, through indirect nudges, or through both? (The Strategy)
3) Design of system qualities
Grounded in the previous two steps, this step forms an integral part of the design process itself.
In order to be more persuasive, the design can enable the technology to perform the following actions for the user (the authors refer to these as ‘categories’):
- Directly help the user achieve their behaviour change goal (Primary task support)
- Provide feedback to the user (Dialogue support)
- Make the user trust the technology by boosting its credibility (System credibility support)
- Support the user though connecting them with other users (Social support)
Here, to guide designers, Oinas-Kukkonen and Harjumaa offer a toolbox of elementary building blocks (aka principles) that help the designers achieve each of the above actions. There is no obligation for the designer to use every building block, or even to target every category. Instead, the PSD toolbox serves as a smorgasbord of opportunities for designers to explore, so that they can customise their approach to their specific type of persuasive technology.
Please check out the authors’ open access paper on PSD for further information.
So… what do climate psychology and persuasive tech have in common?
Back to my disco ball moment from earlier. Right from the start, I had an inkling that marrying up climate psychology and persuasive tech would work. As I went on to explore these two domains in more detail, I was able to prove that this was indeed the case. Specifically, I focussed on comparing Stoknes’ climate communication heuristics (the rules of thumb to overcome the ‘5 D’ barriers of Distance, Doom, Dissonance, Denial and iDentity) and the principles of the PSD framework.
I found a significant amount of overlap between the two frameworks — 4 out of 5 of Stoknes’ climate communication heuristics had as many as 14 (out of the total of 29) PSD principles directly embedded within them.
These similarities are perhaps unsurprising, given that both frameworks were developed to persuade people. In the case of Stoknes, the purpose was to break the climate silence and to make people act on climate change; in the case of PSD, the purpose was to persuade the user to hire a digital technology to achieve their target behaviour.
Aaaand…. if I make the target behaviour for both frameworks the same (i.e. breaking the climate silence), they simply and naturally blend into one harmonious system. Bingo!
Not another mobile app!
As a designer, I like to get my hands dirty. An entirely academic dissertation was not going to cut it for me — I had to ground it in creating something tangible — something that I could test with real users. The idea of an app was an obvious one for me.
Researching the market, I’ve discovered that the world of apps that combine climate change and persuasive technology is a real Wild West. Some apps, released by larger organisations, have been relatively successful — such as We Don’t Have Time — a valiant effort in applying the mobile medium to climate change communication. However, a whole host of others have been created by smaller teams and vary vastly in their quality, scope and application of persuasive methodology — and, unsurprisingly, in their uptake by users.
A successful app on climate change that uses persuasive technology as intended, would be addressing a very obvious gap in the market. Creating one would also be a task and a half… But I like a challenge!
How about a bowl of soup?
So far, I had two methods at my disposal: Persuasive Systems Design and the climate psychology heuristics by Stoknes. I had a physical form for these — a mobile app. Now, how to get these to meet in the middle?
Enter mixed methods. Or, as I jokingly call it, a soup of methods.
HCID is in its infancy as an academic discipline, and as such it has benefitted from both traditional and novel academic approaches. While the old school academia may scream at this, in HCID — in my experience, at least — it is acceptable to mix various methods to suit the unique needs of the project, but only if it is done carefully with ample justification, and provided that the methods don’t directly contradict each other. To labour the soup metaphor, leeks would go well with potatoes and cream, whereas cabbage may do better with beets in a borscht.
In academic computing, projects that create a tangible product or prototype (and not just a multi-thousand-word paper), are known as ‘design and build’ projects. While Persuasive Systems Design was ideal for 'design and build’, its focus was not on the usability of the product but on its persuasiveness.
So, to ensure that usability was not an afterthought, I leaned on the old tried and trusted User-Centred Design approach. Thus, it became a third ingredient in my soup of methods.
And so, the scene was set. Now I knew what I wanted to create and I had the tools for it. The next stages would be about making it happen.
NEXT IN SERIES: Part II — Everyone loves stories
Check out Part II of this blog in the link above.
***Note 1: on terminology and format***
In this blog series, I am using the terms ‘persuasive technology’ and ‘persuasive design’ interchangeably. I refer to Stoknes’ barriers and solutions as ‘heuristics’ to suit the context of my project. I also take some liberties with the terms used in the Persuasive Systems Design framework — for example, by referring to the PSD ‘principles’ as ‘building blocks.’ This is done deliberately to help the narrative flow, and I hope I can be forgiven for this by the original authors.
The format of my project — a MSc dissertation resulting in an academic paper of 30,000 words — followed a rigorous academic process in order to comply with the requirements of my course. In this blog series, I will be skipping through some sections of it, for the sake of creating a punchier storyline.
The app that I have created for this project is not intended for commercial release and to date only exists in prototype form.
