Informing Design of Suggestion and Self-Monitoring Tools through Participatory Experience Prototypes

We aim to design a persuasive technology to help college students, who are particularly susceptible to sleep deprivation, get better, longer, and more regular sleep. In order to gain the insights of our future users, we applied a participatory design approach that included experience prototypes, which aim to actively engage designers and participants with the functions that new technology might serve in the context of their daily lives. We deployed two experience prototypes: paper sleep logs and scripted reminders. We show how deploying low-technology experience prototypes as part of a participatory process can engender valuable insights into persuasive technology design.