IDetective: A location based game to persuade users unconsciously

Persuasive applications that change user behaviors and attitudes have been used for dietary support and healthcare and so on. When we use persuasive application to solve the social problems such as global warming and health issues, it is necessary that we extend the range of target users to people who are not interested in a problematic behavior. In this paper, we suggested an unconscious persuasive technique to design a persuasive application that is able to encourage people unconsciously. We have developed iDetective as a prototype application that persuades users unconsciously using agent persuasion and consciousness sensing. At the same time, we have evaluated the effectiveness of unconscious persuasion and influence on users through a user study using iDetective. As the result, although the unconscious persuasion on iDetective has yielded desirable effect, we could not find whether our application was able to attract people who are no interested in the target behavior. In addition, we have found that participants were not offended by the fact of unconscious persuasion and obtained possibilities and problems of unconscious persuasion.