Technology for Behavior Change – Potential, Challenges, and Ethical Questions

The multitude of technologies in our daily life – smartphones, ticket machines, and communication services like WhatsApp or social media platforms like Facebook – naturally shapes our actions and thinking. Beyond this, technology also becomes a medium for actively influencing and changing human behavior. Often, the intended change in behavior aims at socially desirable goals, such as conscious, sustainable consumption, public safety, or the adoption of healthier lifestyles. Examples are speed monitoring displays, smart meters to control energy consumption, or mobile apps that remind their users of doing more sports. Also healthcare providers make use of such solutions and started to equip their customers with “smart technology”, tracking their actions and daily routines. A healthy lifestyle is rewarded with a fee reduction, or, in other words, not using such technology is punished with paying more. Apparently, such products have high potential to better our lives, but they also raise serious ethical concerns: Should we consider the induced changes in behavior as manipulation? And if so, in which cases might such manipulation be justified? Does the design of these products show enough respect for the autonomy, dignity and privacy of the users? The discussion of such normative issues has not yet reached any definitive conclusions. In general, we are a dealing with a relatively young product category that obviously asks for new models, metrics and quality criteria. While users and designers are confronted with such technologies in their daily life and working environment, many established criteria of “positive user experience” (e. g., efficiency, comfort) are not applicable anymore. Instead of making life easy and smooth, technologies for behavior change often deliberately create friction. The idea of an aesthetic of friction [3] is to break up routines to inspire reflection. For example, Keymoment [4] makes the choice between taking the car or the bike more deliberate. If the user takes the car key, Keymoment throws the bike key at the users’ feet. You can pick it up, hang it back and still take the car – or reflect on what might be good for your health and the environment. However, aesthetic of friction is only one possible design principle. It might not be suited for all contexts of behavior change and especially long term effects still require further exploration. Our goal is to develop, ideally in an interdisciplinary effort, more general standards, design guidelines and quality criteria that help us to describe, design and evaluate such products, also considering ethical perspectives. As a start to this endeavor, the present article points out some central questions about the potential, current challenges and ethical issues in the field of technology for behavior change. The following sections are based on a discussion between experts with backgrounds in psychology, design, media informatics and philosophy. Sarah Diefenbach, whose background is in psychology, led the discussion. Her current research centers around technology design as a chance to support self-improvement and well-being but also the critical side effects and ‘unhealthy routines’ initiated through technology and social media. Andreas Kapsner is a philosopher whose main focus has been the question in how far governments should make use of such technologies and techniques. The idea that this potential to lead citizens towards “health, wealth and happiness” should be vigorously exploited has been popularized by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their best-selling book “Nudge”. Matthias Laschke, whose background is design and human-computer-interaction, focuses on interactive objects that help people to change their *Corresponding author: Sarah Diefenbach, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich, Munich, Germany, e-mail: sarah.diefenbach@lmu.de Andreas Kapsner, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany, e-mail: andreas.kapsner@lmu.de Matthias Laschke, Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen, Germany, e-mail: matthias.laschke@folkwang-uni.de Jasmin Niess, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany, e-mail: jasmin.Niess@psy.lmu.de Daniel Ullrich, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany, e-mail: daniel.ullrich@ifi.lmu.de