Paper Reading #5 - There's a Monster in My Kitchen: Using Aversive Feedback to Motivate Behavior Change

Reference Information:
Title: There’s a Monster in my Kitchen: Using Aversive Feedback to Motivate Behaviour Change
Authors: Ben Kirman, Conor Linehan, Shaun Lawson, Derek Foster, Mark Doughty
Presentation venue: CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Comments:
Zack Henkel
Shena Hoffmann

Summary:
This paper discusses modern technology which persuades users. The technology hopes to interact back and forth with us to mold or shape our behavior. Behavioral psychology plays a major role in developing this because it can lay a framework for how machines should be programmed to get us to change. Our behavior is determined by our surroundings, and having an environment with a persuading technology will help change behavior. It could do this by negative or positive reinforcement to change the percentage of outcomes a user will do a certain action. Nag-Baztag is a technology of such actions. It is there to persuade users to be more environmentally friendly in the kitchen. This machine is able to control your kitchen and shut appliances off at will if users do not listen to it. This is an example of how persuasive technology could be implemented and may lead to different variations of it.

Discussion:
This seems like a really bad idea. The article gives an example of video games as giving reinforcment, but video games do not affect you in the real world, this does. I am already a slave to computers as it is and now I am going to have to listen to its demands or get punished. No thank you!