Lingering Serious Experience as Trigger to Raise Awareness, Encourage Reflection and Change Behavior

While work in interaction design, human-computer interaction (HCI) and the games literature begins to address experience beyond positive, it just scratches the surface. By turning to drama, literature, music, art and film that has shaped experiences and emotion beyond the positive and fun for many years, we describe what experience beyond positive looks like, show how it is not always “uncomfortable” and argue for the more appropriate term “serious experience”. We discuss the importance of the takeaway message / serious experience in persuasive technology, persuasive games and serious games to linger or resonate post-encounter for user/players to encourage reflection, affect attitudes and change behaviors in order to fulfill a persuasive purpose. Finally, we describe associated ethical concerns and make recommendations for designers, evaluators and practitioners in order to safeguard players/users.