Charlie Pinder

Exploring Nonconscious Behaviour Change Interventions on Mobile Devices

Modern cognitive psychology theories such as Dual Process Theory suggest that the source of much habitual behaviour is the nonconscious. Despite this, most behaviour change interventions using technology (BCITs) focus on conscious strategies to change peoples behaviour. We propose an alternative avenue of research, which focuses on understanding how best to directly target the nonconscious via mobile devices in real-life situations to achieve behaviour change.

Accept the Banana: Exploring Incidental Cognitive Bias Modification Techniques on Smartphones

Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) techniques show promise in psychology as an attitude, affect and/or behaviour change technique, but have yet to be implemented or evaluated extensively on smartphones. We present a pilot study exploring appropriate gestures for accepting and rejecting healthy eating stimuli on smartphones and apply them in an incidental, unobtrusive way within a smartphone screen shown at unlock time. Our main finding is evidence that a short course of incidental smartphone CBM alters some measures of food attitudes. We suggest a programme of future research to explore the area further, informed by our results and a related user survey

The Anti-Influence Engine: Escaping the Diabolical Machine of Pervasive Advertising

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about the need for and possible incarnations of anti-advert technology. Advertisers are increasingly using pervasive and nonconscious routes to emotionally manipulate people. HCI researchers have yet to provide the tools to counter these unwanted influences. This paper outlines a design fiction solution, the Anti-Influence Engine: a distributed system that returns to users the power over their own associative memories. The Engine gathers advert-exposure information, and offers users multiple ways to counteract emotionally manipulative adverts. Design and ethical issues are discussed.

Subliminal Priming of Nonconscious Goals on Smartphones

We present a theoretical justification for and design of an experiment to explore the use of subliminal priming of nonconscious goals on smartphones to achieve behaviour change.

Exploring the feasibility of subliminal priming on smartphones

Subliminal priming has the potential to influence peoples attitudes and behaviour, making them prefer certain choices over others. Yet little research has explored its feasibility on smartphones, even though the global popularity and increasing use of smartphones has spurred interest in mobile behaviour change interventions. This paper addresses technical, ethical and design issues in delivering mobile subliminal priming. We present three explorations of the technique: a technical feasibility study, and two participant studies. A pilot study (n=34) explored subliminal goal priming in-the-wild over 1 week, while a semi-controlled study (n=101) explored the immediate effect of subliminal priming on 3 different types of stimuli. We found that although subliminal priming is technically possible on smartphones, there is limited evidence of impact on changes in how much stimuli are preferred by users, with inconsistent effects across stimuli types. We discuss the implications of our results and directions for future research.

Zephyr: exploring digital behaviour change interventions to treat hoarding

Hoarding disorder is a complex condition that has attracted little research attention, despite adversely affecting 2-5% of the population. We review the options and difficulties in the treatment of hoarding disorder using technology. We present a novel intervention design, delivered on tablets, that combines a Cognitive Bias Modification game with goal tracking functionality. We outline two experiments in progress: a lab study to measure the impact of our game on a non-hoarding population, and a probe study to determine the suitability of the intervention for participants with hoarding disorder.

Nonconscious Behaviour Change Technology: Targeting The Automatic

My research focuses on the use of technology to directly target nonconscious processes to drive behaviour change. It is rooted in habit and dual process theories, and explores the transfer of psychology techniques from labs to smartphones. This paper outlines a set of related experiments and surveys exploring subliminal priming, implementation intentions and cognitive bias modification as potential nonconscious interventions to change behaviour.

Interaction issues in computer aided semantic annotation of multimedia

The CASAM project aims to provide a tool for more efficient and effective annotation of multimedia documents through collaboration between a user and a system performing an automated analysis of the media content. A critical part of the project is to develop a user interface which supports both the user and the system working co-operatively and asynchronously. In this paper we discuss the work undertaken, the proposed user interface and underlying interaction issues which drove its development.

Subliminal semantic number processing on smartphones

One potential method of improving the efficiency of human-computer interaction is to display information subliminally. Such information cannot be recalled consciously, but has some impact on the perceiver. However, it is not yet clear whether people can extract meaning from subliminal presentation of information in mobile contexts. We therefore explored subliminal semantic priming on smartphones. This builds on mixed evidence for subliminal priming across HCI in general, and mixed evidence for the effect of subliminal affective priming on smartphones. Our semi-controlled experiment (n=103) investigated subliminal processing of numerical information on smartphones. We found evidence that concealed transfer of information is possible to a very limited extent, but little evidence of a semantic effect. Overall, the impact is effectively negligible for practical applications. We discuss the implications of our results for real-world deployments and outline future research themes as HCI moves beyond mobile.

Digital Behaviour Change Interventions to Break and Form Habits

Digital behaviour change interventions, particularly those using pervasive computing technology, hold great promise in supporting users to change their behaviour. However, most interventions fail to take habitual behaviour into account, limiting their potential impact. This failure is partly driven by a plethora of overlapping behaviour change theories and related strategies that do not consider the role of habits. We critically review the main theories and models used in the research to analyse their application to designing effective habitual behaviour change interventions. We highlight the potential for Dual Process Theory, modern habit theory, and Goal Setting Theory, which together model how users form and break habits, to drive effective digital interventions. We synthesise these theories into an explanatory framework, the Habit Alteration Model, and use it to outline the state of the art. We identify the opportunities and challenges of habit-focused interventions.