Towards Analytical Modeling for Persuasive Design Choices in Mobile Apps

Persuasive technology has emerged as a new field of research in the past decade with its applications in various domains including web-designing, human-computer interaction, healthcare systems, and social networks. Although persuasive technology has its roots in psychology and cognitive sciences, researchers from the computing disciplines are also increasingly interested in it. Unfortunately, the existing theories, models, and frameworks for persuasive system design fall short due to absence of systematic design processes mostly used in the computing domains as well as lack of support for appropriate post-analysis. This work provides some insight into such limitations and identifies the importance of analytical modeling for persuasion in mobile applications design. The authors illustrate, using a case study, that appropriate mathematical models can be applied together with user modeling to develop a persuasive system that will allow the designer to consider several design choices simultaneously. Keywords—goal; intent; analytics; modeling; feedback