IS376 Introduction to Persuasive Technology – Stanford Trip
It is five o’clock in the morning right now, and I am in front of the CGU dormitory with En-ling, Igho and Spencer. We are waiting for the car heading to the Ontario airport, and I am very exciting because I am going to start a two-days trip with my professors and classmates of IS376 to Stanford University. We can have the chance to listen to the lecture from B.J Fogg and experience the newest technology of health information, which is related to persuasive technology.
The airplane is actually just about one hour and ten minutes, so we arrive the San Jose airport
very early. For me, I think that it is very nice to have a small trip at the end of the semester, because I can leave all the assignment away temporarily. So, I think I will definitely enjoy the trip, and even it is not for fun.
Our first destination is in “Media X “ which is in the Stanford Campus. It is a very beautiful building, and the insides building design is also very special. Our first lecture is about the social media. I am very interested in this topic for a long time, so I am very lucky to have the chance to listen to this lecture in Stanford. The speaker starts from introducing the communication tools. She says that one of the most powerful communication tools right now is “cell phone”. She also mentions a very interesting concept which is about the way we call “phone” switch
from “The phone” to “My phone”, and it is one of the key points why we use the “cell phone” all the time, because we feel that it belongs to us. We will have three kinds of abilities when we use the cell phone, which are “convenience”, “choice” and “control”. I think these three concepts are very important because they all enhance our ability for communication.
After that, it continues to talk about the related concept of social media, such as the way of message flow, and how people use social media to collaborate with each other to create new stuff. It is a kind of “open innovation” concept, because it represents that people who don’t know each other can collaborate with each other to accomplish a mission, which is hard to be done before. The speaker mentions a very interesting example for collaboration, which I have never heard before – World of Warcraft(WOW). She
mentions that WOW can help people to develop their leadership and help people to realize the concept of collaboration. I think it is very true, because I used to play this game with some of my friends. We have to schedule a time to go online together to solve the mission. During the mission, every team member is assigned a specific job in order to collaborate with each other fighting the monster. However, I think it is still not a good idea to spend a lot of time on playing WOW, because it will make the player do nothing but playing the game.
The final part of this lecture mentions that the relationship between social media and persuasive technology, as well as how people use social media to convince people. She says that when people become part of message, would it be more persuasive to another people. The
answer would be correct, but it also has the limitation. For example, people wouldn’t be convinced easily, only if the people who try to convince them are similar to them. Last but not least, the lecture remarked that we should try to use the word “empower, instead of using “persuasive”. I think that this point is very interesting and definitely worth to spend time to research. After the lecture, we head to the basement for the lunch in order to have enough energy to attend the persuasive course, which is taught by B.J Fogg.
The class is actually very exciting and interesting for me, because I have the chance to join a class with some of the smartest students in the world. The class is mainly talking about the persuasive technology and the tools, such as mobile phone and Facebook. Professor B.J Fogg also mentions that some persuasive module he designed for his theory. At the end of the class, he let students share the project they are current doing, which I think is very interesting for me. The most impressive project for me is a “Google Chrome” plug-in which is design for Facebook. After installing the plug-in, it will display a health message (The project is about how to convince people to change their behavior to be health) on the top of user’s Facebook Wall. It means that every time when people login Facebook to see the information on their wall, they will definitely see the every day health reminder on the top of the wall. I think this plug-in would definitely be a potential product for persuasive technology. I also asked the student who presented this project some questions. She is very nice, and also tell me some useful information about her project.
After that, Professor B.J Fogg started to have the conversation with us. He asked us some questions and told us some information about the persuasive technology. During the conversation, the most interesting question for me was how to make people use social technology, which is the most important question for people to think about. Originally, I was always think about how to develop a very awesome technology to impress the user, but the key points for persuasive technology development is not how you design the product. Instead of that, how to persuade people to use the product would be the most important thing for designer to consider about.
Time is flying, it is almost the evening, we start to head to our final destination for today- Media X. It is in the same building, but we will listen to another lecture, which is about health simulation. The speaker is a very nice India woman, and one of her colleagues sits with us. She shows us a very cool simulation system for training the physician. Her team collaborates with a
game company to design a simulation system via the game technology. The system is actually very cool, because it can let physicians have the chance to “really” diagnose the “patients.” This system can help them get more experience before diagnosing the real patients. She also describes how they design the face of patients in the simulation system, and the design concept of the simulation world. I think that using the game to be the simulation would be a very good idea not only for training physicians, but also for other jobs. Recently, I saw a video, which is about McDonald’s in Japan, starts to use Nintendo DS Game to train their employees in order to let them quickly learn how to do their job (http://gizmodo.com/5520157/mcdonalds-trains-new-employees-with-this-nintendo-ds-game). It is actually very interesting for me, and I hope it would be used in other different areas in the future.
After a wonder dinner and awesome hotel experience, we start our second day trip. Our first
destination is “Public Health Institute”, which is located in Oakland. The lecture started from the brief introduction for persuasive technology, which was presented by Professor Chatterjee. Although, I have already heard about the presentation during the class, it is still a very good opportunity for me to listen again in order to enforce my memory for persuasive technology. I liked the question that was raised at the end of the presentation - “I would never design a persuasive tool that I had never used.” I think it is definitely a very true perspective, because if I cannot even convince myself, how do I convince the other people. After that, the
speaker from the institute started to present the concept about the Health Information system. I think it is very interesting for me, because it presents some health technology projects they are currently doing, and some statistic information shows that how many hospitals had already started to implement the health information technology into their organizations. He also mentions that how to train the older adult to use the technology, and the way of implementing the Health Information System into the hospital. All the things that he presented to us all impress me a lot. It makes me feel that the HIT is really a very good field for IT people like me to involve into, and I hope one day I can have the chance to do the HIT project.
The last destination of this trip is in the Stanford. It is a simulation center about physician training. During the lecture, we have the chance to see a video that is about a process of diagnosing a fake baby. It would be a little bit awkward to look three physicians to make emergency rescue for a fake baby at first, but it is actually a very useful way to give the real experience to these physicians. The fake baby has all the reaction, which the real baby would have. We also have a chance to visit the simulation control center where the video was taken. In this room, people can control the fake baby’s action, the controller can remote control the “baby” via some specific device. They can generate different kinds of situation to let trainees to deal
with the situation in order to give them the real experience.
After the end of this trip, we went to the bookstore in the Stanford University to buy some souvenirs, and started head to the airport. We all tired after arriving the Ontario, but I am very
glad that I can have the chance to visit Stanford. It is a very special experience for me, and I think it is definitely worth it. During this trip, I not only learn about the knowledge, but also have the chance to get familiar with my classmates. Thank you, Professor Chatterjee, and all my classmates, it is an awesome class trip!!
