| Praise: by offering praise, a system can make users more open to persuasion (principle 8). |
There were weekly check-ins via the persuasive technology platform with HCPsa and other organizational professionals who offered praise for accomplishments and encouragement to increase goals. The platform facilitated “walking buddies” (pairs) who could encourage regular walks and wellness discussions.
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| Rewards: systems that reward targets may have great persuasive powers (principle 9). |
The platform gave digital rewards, such as trophy icons, on the fly through HCPs (eg, chats and email). Winning teams were listed on leaderboards. Learning from 1 healthy breakfast offered through the platform to persuade other stations. Dietitians offered improvements around healthy pancake breakfast for a first station and went to stations to illustrate the changes in their cupboards, fridges, and group breakfasts.
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| Reminders: if a system reminds users of their target behavior, the users will more likely achieve their goals (principle 10). |
To their individual private webpage, users received weekly results and reminders of their individual trackers (measures), goals, and interactions (summarized from users’ primary tasks, which they were given by HCPs). The platform presented group averages, which individual firefighters could review whenever they wanted.
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| Suggestion: systems offering suggestions at opportune moments will have greater persuasive powers (principle 11). |
The platform produced a professional dashboard with graphs where HCPs reviewed graphs to identify which users needed new suggestions (eg, a personal trainer could post new tailored exercises). Other suggestions were planned for firefighters who plateaued and stopped progressing as suggested in care plans. In weekly reviews, the HCPs devised new suggestions at the exact time they saw an issue on dashboard graphs. Hence, interventions happened quickly. HCPs also watched for gaps in the evidence and the absence of questions from firefighters to offer more suggestions. A lack of questions could indicate plateauing, and advisers watched to probe if firefighters wanted more suggestions.
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| Similarity: people are more readily persuaded through systems that remind (them of) themselves in some meaningful way (principle 12). |
Content tailored to the firefighters’ wellness documents, their union’s wellness terminology, and experts’ suggestions. HCPs and other organizational experts connected terminology to other national standards (eg, hypertension and privacy standards) to the content on webpages.
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| Liking: a system that is visually attractive for its users is likely to be more persuasive (principle 13). |
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| Social role: if a system adopts a social role, users will more likely use it for persuasive purposes (principle 14). |
Stations mentors, coaches, personal trainers, persuasive technology account helpers, and HCPs took on social roles (principle 14) to advise other firefighters and begin dialogues. Once dialogues started, then the social dialogue management moved into suggesting principle 11.
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