Designing salient and supportive systems for proximal behaviors.

Designers should create salient reminders and support mechanisms to help users stick to near-term plans by reducing participation costs and increasing belief in the ease of tasks.

About this paper

The author conducted two studies to understand how temporal distance affects planned behavior, finding that attitudes become more important for distant events while perceived behavior control influences intentions regardless of timing.

These findings advance the Theory of Planned Behavior and provide strategies for designers and event organizers to motivate behaviors over different timeframes.

Here are some methods used in this study:

Field Experiment Logistic Regression

Which part of the paper did the design guideline come from?

“We hypothesized that people tend to have a higher intention to perform the behavior in the far future compared to near future (H5). Results of the paired-samples t-test show that the mean of willingness to attend the yoga class differs a month before the event (M=.80, SD=.41) and a few days before the event (M=.60, SD=.49) at the .01 level of significance (t=2.70, df=29, p<.01, 95% CI, for a mean difference .05 to .35, r=.62). We should point out that in the end, only 6 participants actually (...)” (‘Change in Intention Over Time’ section)

Suh, M. (Mia), & Hsieh, G. (2016). Designing for Future Behaviors. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Inspiration and scope

In this paper, the authors focused on designers' and event organizers' characteristics related to supporting near-term plans and behaviors.

You are designing for people who identify as Afro-diasporic and want to learn about African stories and culture. Your design context and the paper's context differ in that the academic paper supports designers and organizers to facilitate group behaviors, whereas your AR model focuses on personal cultural education using interactive technology. At the same time, both contexts benefit from engagement techniques. Strategies to encourage participation in proximal behaviors in the academic paper could adapt to AR experiences for Afro-diasporic users. Techniques like gamification and personalized feedback maintain engagement.

Also, they differ in that the academic paper's approach centers on traditional communication methods while your work uses advanced technology like gyroscopes and accelerometers for AR, requiring precision and user immersion. At the same time, both contexts are sensitive to cultural elements. The academic paper involves understanding cultural and social dynamics in events, while your AR model needs to authentically represent Afro-diasporic stories and culture. Cultural research and respect for the audience's background are crucial in both.

Leveraging these similarities, you might design an AR interaction model that integrates Afro-diasporic culture using immersive prompts and gamification to enhance engagement. This way, users stay engaged and feel a stronger connection to the content, leading to a more enriching and culturally relevant educational experience.

Your input

What: I am designing for an AR interaction model that uses gyroscope and accelerometer to scan a person's environment so that the digital world can be created within its bounds.
Who: I'm designing for people who identify as Afro-diasporic and want to learn about African stories and culture.
Design stage: Ideation, Evaluation

Design ideas

Consider the following components for your design:

Incorporate interactive 3D models of culturally significant landmarks and artifacts within the AR environment.

Use dynamic, context-sensitive prompts that provide historical facts and stories about depicted landmarks or artifacts as users navigate different areas.

Introduce a gamified exploration map that facilitates journey-based learning, rewarding users as they discover new cultural elements and complete interactive challenges.

Methods for you

Consider the following method(s) used in this paper for your design work:

Theory Of Planned Behavior (TPB)

Using TPB can help generate ideas by understanding the attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control of your target users. Keep in mind to identify and focus explicitly on these components to design well-rounded, persuasive interactions.

Construal Level Theory (CLT)

CLT can help in ideation by framing how users think about the AR interactions in terms of 'why' for distant future and 'how' for the near future. Consider focusing on abstract cultural motivations for long-term engagement and concrete features for immediate use.

Metrics for you

Consider the following metric(s) used in this paper to evaluate your design work:

Attitude

This metric measures the degree to which a person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior in question. For designers, ensuring positive attitudes towards AR storytelling can enhance user engagement and cultural learning.

Perceived Behavioral Control

This metric assesses the perceived ease or difficulty of performing a behavior. For AR storytelling, ensuring users feel capable of interacting with the system can enhance cultural learning and immersive experience.

[Figure 4] From this figure, you can gain insights into the interaction effects of key variables, which may inspire ways to enhance user engagement in your AR interaction model.