Digital Mirror

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The Persuasive Mirror

Ana C. Andres del Valle and Agata Opalach

Accenture Technology Labs, 449 Route des Cretes - BP 99 - 06902, Sophia Antipolis,France

[email protected]

Abstract. The Persuasive Mirror is an example of computerized per-suasion. A device that provides enhanced visual feedback of peoples faceusing the appropriate psychological strategies can give the support theyneed to maintain a healthy life style.

1 Introduction

Very often, people undergo psychological struggle when willing to keep up ahealthy and reasonable lifestyle. Generally, the activities that please our mindsdo not match those that are healthy for our body. Changing unwanted behaviorhas become a concern. It seems that psychological support might be needed tohelp people that at some moment in time are determined to change their habitsbecause they want to improve their quality of life.

The Persuasive Mirror is a fine example of computerized persuasion or cap-tology[3]. The captology efficiency of a piece of technology is strongly related

to the capability that its interface has to impact the user. Ideally, the selectedtechnology has to be non-intrusive, often used and able to provide the user withrelevant feedback linked to the activities he is concerned about. We consideredseveral physical forms to give shape to the concept, and finally decided to use amirror because it is a natural object in peoples life and it is generally used morethan once a day. The Persuasive Mirror provides daily motivation aide to indi-viduals because it is a nagging object that uses sensors to gather informationabout our behavior, analyzes these data with relation to our goals, and visuallyrewards good and exposes bad behavior.

2 Psychological Strategies to Achieve Persuasion

The Persuasive Mirror uses persuasion strategies whose goal is motivating themirrors owner to have a healthier lifestyle. Let us stress that the mirror has nopre-encoded universal values it tries to impose on the user; the mirror suggestsaccording to the users characteristics and goals.

Some of the psychological concepts we would like to take into account are [2]:


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Punishment versus reward: the mirror reflection is able to present thefuture consequences of a certain behavior. It will show the bad results of

not behaving appropriately versus the good results of acting correctly. Theobjective being that the user will be motivated by seeing that a change inbehavior really matters.

Likes and dislikes: people have more positive or negative preferences tocertain colors, shapes, and visual structures. The mirror could take advantageof that by relating the visual environment the users likes and dislikes. Likeswill be attached to positive behavior; dislikes to negative.

Positive reinforcement: [7] is the technique used to encourage people tostart having or maintain a good behavior by reminding them how good it isto them (positive feedback) but also how it can still be improved (by lettingthem know that the final goal is getting closer). Once a positive attitudebehavior has appeared, it is challenging to maintain the interest of the userin continuing acting appropriately.

Fig. 1. The Persuasive Mirror architecture.

3 The Persuasive Mirror

Fig. 1 depicts the architecture behind the device. Three modules integrate thesystem:

Sensor network: Sensors are the backbone of any intelligent technology. Thesensor network plays a critical role in the architecture because it gathersinformation about human activity in various ways. The mirror reflection is


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designed based upon the users behavior. Activity related to health habitscan be observed, for instance, using video cameras [1].

Control system: The control system can be considered the brain of the Per-suasive Mirror. It acts as a bridge between what the person does and whatthe mirror provides as a feedback. As we explain in Section 2, there is nouniversal strategy for persuasion that can be applied to everyone. In fact,the control of the mirror is the result of complex customization of the globalsystem based on the experts advice about health and psychological influence.

Digital mirror: Altered visual feedback of our own face can have great impacton us. In order to be able to give customized reflection a flexible digital mirrorhas been created. The digital mirror not only works as a regular mirror butalso enhances the users face thanks to different Image Processing techniques.

Fig. 2. Components of the digital mirror: two cameras, one touch screen and some

lights.

We have built a prototype (Fig. 2) to study how technologically feasiblethe Persuasive Mirror concept is. The device is an augmented mirror designedwith three working modes: 1) progress representation, showing feedback on re-cent/past behavior (e.g. silhouette slimmer for a balanced meal, bigger for junkfood and poor activity), 2) behavior summary (statistics on good and badbehavior, areas to improve), and 3) a regular mirror (equivalent to switching thedevice off). Our prototype simulates the sensor network and gives two differentexamples of persuasion strategies.

Fig. 3 illustrates how the mirror could change the perception of our activitiesby showing us the consequences of our acts. The prototype exemplifies two dif-ferent attitudes: (1) a controlled diet has allowed the user to lose those kilos shedid not want, and the mirror reminds her the progress she has made (positivereinforcement); and (2) the user has not been taking into account the mir-rors health suggestions and the mirror shows her the future consequences of herunhealthy activities (punishment & dislikes).


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Fig. 3. The Persuasive Mirror prototype. Row 1 presents the positive reinforcementstrategy; row 2 shows the punishment feedback.

4 Conclusions and Future Work

The Persuasive Mirror was conceived as part of the Accentures Intelligent HomeServices initiative [5]. This initiative aims at enabling the elderly to age au-

tonomously at home. To allow older people stay healthy, specific coaching canbe given in the form of visual feedback. In an environment where artificial intel-ligence and sensors will be deployed all over the home [6], [4], this mirror wouldbecome a personal coach.

The Persuasive Mirror is a visually enhanced display that alters peoplesreflection to motivate reactions and change in behavior. We believe that com-puterized persuasion delivered by such a device can help the users reach theirpersonal goals.

So far, researchers at the Accenture Technology Labs have been mainly fo-cused on the technical challenges. Our future research includes doing some fieldstudies to analyze how facial visual feedback can help prevent overweight. Weplan to do this research in collaboration with medical institutions.

References

1. Activity monitoring. Intelligent Home Services. AccentureTechnology Information retrieved on August 2005 from:http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=services\technology\research\ihsactivity.xml


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2. Cialdini, R. B.: Influence. Science and Practice. Allyn & Bacon Publishers, MA.(2001) ISBN 0-321-01147-3

3. Fogg, B. J. (2003). Persuasive technology: using computers to change what wethink and do. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers4. Hutchinson, H. et al. Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families.

Proc. ACM CHI 2003 Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems (2003)1723

5. Intelligent Home Services Accenture: Accenture Technology LabsIntelligent Home Services initiative. Retrieved March 25, 2005 from:http://ww.accenture.com/ihs

6. Intille, S.: Designing a home of the future. IEEE Pervasive Computing (2002) 80867. Pryor, K.: Dont shoot the dog! The new art of teaching and training. [Chapter

4] Bantam Books (1999) ISBN 0-553-38039-7

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