1,721,282 research outputs found
Personalization for persuasive arguments
No full textThis keynote discusses why (and what kind of) personalization is needed to produce persuasive arguments and the challenges of investigating this topic. Personalization is when a system automatically adapts its actions to a user; in this case, we are interested in all actions related to the use of persuasive arguments. We will use the term ‘hearer’ to indicate the user, who in this case is the target of the persuasive argument. The need for personalization in persuasive systems in general has been argued before [13]. Examples of where personalization is needed specific to the case of persuasive arguments include the following. Deciding on the type of argument. There is a growing body of research showing that adapting the type of argument to the hearer matters [11, 3, 21, 20, 4, 10]: which argumentation scheme [27] or Cialdini’s principle [2] is used, and which framing, with different types of hearers more susceptible to different kinds of arguments. Deciding on the content of the argument. Even when using the same type of argument, the content of the argument needs adapting. First, the position of the argument matters. When an argument’s position is too far from the current position of the hearer, it falls outside the hearer’s so-called latitude of acceptance [25]. In such a case, the argument will not move the hearer’s position towards the speaker’s, but on the contrary, may make the hearer even more ingrained in their original position. Nguyen et al. [19] investigated the hearer’s position after hearing arguments, based on argument strength, argument position and receiver involvement. Position is not just a point on a linear scale (as it was in the research by Nguyen et al). Often, there are multiple ways in which a behaviour can be improved. For example, there are many ways in which a person’s diet can become healthier, and it may be easier to convince some people to eat more vegetables (and even a particular kind of vegetable, c.f. [8]) and other people to eat more fruit. Such cases could be regarded as having multiple position scales, e.g., one for eating vegetables and one for eating fruit. Second, the hearer’s involvement with the topic of the argument matters [9]. For example, when selling a house, one could highlight that the house has a garage that can hold two cars, but if the prospective buyer does not drive, this argument will not help to sell the house. Instead, one might want to highlight that that space could be used as a kids’ playroom (if the buyer has kids) or a gym (if the buyer is into fitness). Involvement is related to the hearer’s values, preferences, interests, and goals [1, 8, 14]. Similarly, research in the Superhub and MyWay European projects on behaviour change for sustainable travel shows that hearer attitudes matter [23, 7], with hearers from different attitudinal segments being influenced by different argument contents. Deciding the source of the argument. The credibility of the (perceived) source of the argument influences the extent to which people feel the argument is believable, trustworthy, non-biased, and detailed [17]. The credibility of a source depends on the hearer (as exemplifies also in politics). Additionally, in certain cases it may be better for the system not to provide arguments, but instead encourage the user to make their own arguments, in line with motivational interviewing [18]. This opens a new line of research on how a system can support users to produce self-persuasive arguments. Deciding on the timing of the argument. The timing of arguments also matters. For example, research has shown that people are more persuaded by an argument when they were in a positive affective state than a negative one [12]. The hearer’s cognitive load is also likely to matter. Deciding whether to use arguments at all. Many different persuasion techniques exist; Michie et al. [16] listed 137 techniques based on different theories of behaviour change. Using arguments (as in persuasive messages) is just one such technique. Whether this technique is appropriate depends on the behavioural determinants [15, 5, 6] a system is trying to tackle, which in its turn depends on the person using the persuasive technology. Additionally, research shows that the effectiveness of techniques also depends on user characteristics such as personality [22], and that techniques that may be effective for some people are counterproductive for others [22]. This is likely to also hold for the use of argumentation. Challenges. Challenges include (1) how to measure actual rather than perceived persuasiveness of arguments, and sequences of arguments, under controlled conditions, (2) how to investigate the impact of adaptation in persuasive argumentation (keeping in mind also the principles of layered evaluation [24]), and (3) how to enable a system to generate the variation of arguments that are needed for personalization (building on the work in [26])
12-weken programma ‘Slapen’
No full textThis report includes a preliminary version of a 12-week program for insomnia therapy on the basis of cognitive behavior therapy. The program was written in Dutch for the upcoming book by Isa Hoes and Medina Schuurman published by Kosmos (Utrecht) and targeted at women reaching the menopause. The program has been developed with the aim to combine written text with a smartphone application such as the SleepCare or LylaCoach ap
Listener Modeling and Context-aware Music Recommendation Based on Country Archetypes
Full text linkMusic preferences are strongly shaped by the cultural and socio-economic background of the listener, which is reflected, to a considerable extent, in country-specific music listening profiles. Previous work has already identified several country-specific differences in the popularity distribution of music artists listened to. In particular, what constitutes the “music mainstream” strongly varies between countries. To complement and extend these results, the article at hand delivers the following major contributions: First, using state-of-the-art unsupervized learning techniques, we identify and thoroughly investigate (1) country profiles of music preferences on the fine-grained level of music tracks (in contrast to earlier work that relied on music preferences on the artist level) and (2) country archetypes that subsume countries sharing similar patterns of listening preferences. Second, we formulate four user models that leverage the user’s country information on music preferences. Among others, we propose a user modeling approach to describe a music listener as a vector of similarities over the identified country clusters or archetypes. Third, we propose a context-aware music recommendation system that leverages implicit user feedback, where context is defined via the four user models. More precisely, it is a multi-layer generative model based on a variational autoencoder, in which contextual features can influence recommendations through a gating mechanism. Fourth, we thoroughly evaluate the proposed recommendation system and user models on a real-world corpus of more than one billion listening records of users around the world (out of which we use 369 million in our experiments) and show its merits vis-à-vis state-of-the-art algorithms that do not exploit this type of context information
An appraisal of a collaboration-metric model based on text discourse
No full textThis paper presents a more in-depth analysis based on discourse of the collaboration-metric model, Word-Count/Gini-coefficient measure of symmetry (WC/GCMS) which was introduced in [3]. We discuss the validity of the model in regards to how well it represents what happens in the groups' discourse content. We discuss the application and implication of WC/GCMS based on the goal to incorporate collaborative learning and its cognitive advantages to E-Learning environments
Experiencing VOS: A Visual Orientation System
No full textThis demo introduces VOS - a Visual Orientation System. Since orientation without visual cues is challenging for humans, situations in which visibility is limited pose hindrance and sometimes a threat to human activities. To explore the augmentation design space that enables focusing the sense of hearing, we chose a particular application scenario: swimming in open-water. We developed augmented swimming-goggles that provide visual feedback to complement the sense of orientation. Currently, we explore different information encoding methods. The presented prototype illustrates the differences between using a continuous signal to convey absolute directions and discrete signals to indicate a relative direction
Towards Utter Well-Being: Personalization for Guardian Angels
No full textResearchers claim that we are facing a global loneliness epidemic, and that mental illness, anxiety disorders, stress and burnout are on the rise. Technology, such as social media, is often found to have a detrimental effect on mental health, self-esteem and sleep, and to cause anxiety and feelings of loneliness. This talk is about how adaptive systems can actively improve well-being, instead of contributing to making it worse. We will discuss different ways of doing so, the work already done, the challenges faced, and our vision of a new kind of personalized systems that act as guardian angels. First, systems can provide emotional support, adapted to the recipient's characteristics such as their personality, affective state, cultural background, and stressors experienced. Second, systems can aid humans to provide emotional support. People often struggle to support others, and may say something that is counter productive or nothing at all. Systems can train people on how to provide support. They can also mediate emotional support, adapting support messages to both the support giver and recipient, taking into account for example the closeness of relationships and people's personality. Third, systems can support and motivate people to adopt behaviours that improve their well-being and that of others, and to better regulate their emotions. There has been much research on persuasive technology to support people in changing behaviours, and it has been shown that both the behaviour change techniques used, and attributes of techniques need adapting. Whilst much persuasive technology research has focused on physical well-being and sustainability, the emphasis in this presentation will be on mental well-being and encouraging people to help each other. Fourth, systems can team people up. Systems can decide who are best placed to provide support and motivation, encouraging particular people to support (or ask help from) particular other people. Additionally, adaptive group formation (or peer-to-peer recommendations) can be used for joint problem solving scenarios, with a system deciding or recommending who should work with whom. There are many benefits to group work, but it is also often a source of negative emotions. Adaptive group formation can consider affect and personality in addition to expertise, to minimize such negative emotions. Finally, systems can improve the well-being of groups and not just individuals. People's well-being is influenced by the well-being of others in their surroundings, and people's actions impact the well-being of others. Systems can monitor group well-being. They can encourage and support effective group behaviours, for example, by providing feedback on how group members and the group as a whole function. They can support the building of group identity and cohesion. They can support groups in making decisions that are good for group well-being. Overall, we envision adaptive systems as effective and emotionally intelligent contributors in the community, improving the way people interact, and acting like guardian angels
When Crowds Give You Lemons: Filtering Innovative Ideas using a Diverse-Bag-of-Lemons Strategy
Full text linkFollowing successful crowd ideation contests, organizations in search of the "next big thing" are left with hundreds of ideas. Expert-based idea filtering is lengthy and costly; therefore, crowd-based strategies are often employed. Unfortunately, these strategies typically (1) do not separate the mediocre from the excellent, and (2) direct all the attention to certain idea concepts, while others starve. We introduce DBLemons - a crowd-based idea filtering strategy that addresses these issues by (1) asking voters to identify the worst rather than the best ideas using a "bag of lemons'' voting approach, and (2) by exposing voters to a wider idea spectrum, thanks to a dynamic diversity-based ranking system balancing idea quality and coverage. We compare DBLemons against two state-of-the-art idea filtering strategies in a real-world setting. Results show that DBLemons is more accurate, less time-consuming, and reduces the idea space in half while still retaining 94% of the top ideas
Clairbuoyance: Improving Directional Perception for Swimmers
Full text linkWhile we usually have no trouble with orientation, our sense of direction frequently fails in the absence of a frame of reference. Open-water swimmers raise their heads to look for a reference point, since disorientation might result in exhaustion or even drowning. In this paper, we report on Clairbuoyance --- a system that provides feedback about the swimmer's orientation through lights mounted on swimming goggles. We conducted an experiment with two versions of Clairbuoyance: Discrete signals relative to a chosen direction, and continuous signals providing a sense of absolute direction. Participants swam to a series of targets. Proficient swimmers preferred the discrete mode; novice users the continuous one. We determined that both versions of Clairbuoyance enabled reaching the target faster than without the help of the system, although the discrete mode increased error. Based on the results, we contribute insights for designing directional guidance feedback for swimmers
Multi-Method Evaluation of Adaptive Systems
Full text linkWhen evaluating personalized or adaptive systems, we frequently rely on one single evaluation objective and one single method. This remains us with “blind spots”. A comprehensive evaluation may require a thoughtful integration of multiple methods. This tutorial (i) demonstrates the wide variety of dimensions to be eval- uated, (ii) outlines the methodological approaches to evaluate these dimensions, (iii) pinpoints the blind spots when using only one ap- proach, (iv) demonstrates the benefits of multi-method evaluation, and (v) outlines the basic options how multiple methods can be integrated into one evaluation design. Participants familiarize with the wide spectrum of opportunities how adaptive or personalized systems may be evaluated, and have the opportunity to come up with evaluation designs that comply with the four basic options of multi-method evaluation. The ultimate learning objective is to stimulate the critical reflection of one’s own evaluation practices and those of the community at large
Serious Games for Nutritional Education: Online Survey on Preferences, Motives, and Behaviors Among Young Adults at University
Full text linkBackground: Data on nutritional information and digital gameplay are limited among young adults in Germany. Objective: This survey aimed to gather data on nutritional information sources and digital games for nutritional education (preferences, motives, and behaviors) among young adults at both Munich universities in Germany. Methods: An online survey was developed by an multidisciplinary research group using EvaSys, an in-house survey software. The questionnaire (47 items) covered questions about baseline characteristics (eg, housing situation and weight), nutrition (eg, nutritional information sources), and digital (nutritional) gameplay (eg, preferences, motives, and behaviors). A feedback field was also provided. This publication is based on a selection of 20 questions (7 baseline characteristics, 2 nutrition, 11 gameplay). Young adults, primarily Munich university students aged from 18 to 24 years, were invited to participate by digital and nondigital communication channels between 2016 and 2017. Statistical analyses were performed using Excel 2013 (Microsoft Corp) and R version 3.1.3 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing). Results: In total, 468 young adults (342/468, 73.1% women; 379/468, 81.0% university students) participated. Most of the participants (269/468, 57.5%) were aged 18 to 24 years with a BMI in the normal weight range (346/447, 77.4%). Mean body weight was 65.5 [SD 14.0] kg. Most participants reported getting nutritional information from the internet (372/467, 79.7%) and printed media (298/467, 63.8%), less than 1.0% (2/467, 0.4%) named digital games. Apps (100/461, 21.7%) and university/workplace (146/461, 31.7%) were the most desired sources for additional information about nutrition, while 10.0% (46/461, 10.0%) of participants stated wanting digital games. Almost two-thirds (293/468, 62.6%) of participants played digital games, while one-fifth (97/456, 21.3%) played digital games daily using smartphones or tablets. Finally, most respondents (343/468, 73.3%), mainly women, expressed interest in obtaining nutritional information during digital gameplay. However, significant gender differences were shown for nutritional acquisition behaviors and digital gameplay preferences, motives, and behaviors. Conclusions: Our survey population reported playing digital games (especially men) and wanting nutritional information during digital gameplay (especially women). Furthermore, university or workplace are named as preferred settings for nutritional information. Therefore, a digital game app might have the potential to be a tool for nutritional education among young adults within the university or workplace environment
- …
