Persuasive Technology For Human Development: Review and Case Study

TL;DR

This paper reviews persuasive technology's potential for human development, discusses its theoretical foundations, and presents a case study on its application in Pakistan to promote social good.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of persuasive technology and demonstrates its practical application in a developing country context through a detailed case study.

Findings

Persuasive technology can effectively promote positive behaviors in development contexts.

Design principles from psychology and HCI are crucial for impactful persuasive systems.

Case study shows potential benefits of persuasive tech in health and education in Pakistan.

Abstract

Technology is an extremely potent tool that can be leveraged for human development and social good. Owing to the great importance of environment and human psychology in driving human behavior, and the ubiquity of technology in modern life, there is a need to leverage the insights and capabilities of both fields together for nudging people towards a behavior that is optimal in some sense (personal or social). In this regard, the field of persuasive technology, which proposes to infuse technology with appropriate design and incentives using insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and human-computer interaction holds a lot of promise. Whilst persuasive technology is already being developed and is at play in many commercial applications, it can have the great social impact in the field of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) which uses Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for human developmental ends such as education and health. In this paper we will explore what persuasive technology is and how it can be used for the ends of human development. To develop the ideas in a concrete setting, we present a case study outlining how persuasive technology can be used for human development in Pakistan, a developing South Asian country, that suffers from many of the problems that plague typical developing country.