Human-Computer Persuasive Interaction: Designing the emotional bond with customers

May 16, 2011
Rodrigo de Oliveira | Telefonica Research Barcelona

For several years, computing products were designed mainly with the purpose of increasing efficiency and productivity at work. Soon, this list of goals had to grow in order to target a more diverse set of end users. As a result, the focus of design shifted to creating user experiences that enhance and extend the way people work, communicate and interact. At least over the past 15 years, computing systems started to be seen from a yet complementary perspective: that of a persuasive technology. Interactive experiences with computers now comprise elements of persuasion premeditatedly in order to strengthen customer’s loyalty. In my talk I will describe the most relevant projects that I have carried out over the past 2 years in Telefonica Research that apply concepts of persuasive computing: (1) Movipill: A mobile phone based application that uses social competition and pervasive technology to engage patients in following their medication prescription; (2) Multimedia Storytelling: A multimedia system that leverages on knowledge from social networks to automatically generate appealing personal photo stories; and (3) Psychographics: Modeling and predicting customers’ personality traits in order to provide them with a better quality of service. Finally, I will conclude the talk by outlining the main advantages of addressing the aforementioned projects from a persuasive computing perspective.

Speaker Details

Rodrigo de Oliveira is a research scientist at Telefonica Research Barcelona, Spain. He has a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from State University of Campinas (Brazil), and his main research interests lie at the intersection between human-computer interaction and persuasive computing. Rodrigo was certified with the highest GPA from all courses of Federal University of Lavras (UFLA) in 2002. Five years later he was awarded with the Microsoft Research fellowship and did an internship at the company’s headquarter in the VIBE team (Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment). In 2009, he was highlighted in a publicity campaign by Microsoft Research among its most talented fellows worldwide. In the same year, he was awarded with the Torres Quevedo fellowship to conduct his research agenda.