A Two-Day Doctoral Seminar (2 credit points)

on Thursday ^30th November to Friday 1^st December, 2017

at University of Oulu, Faculty of ITEE

Agnis Stibe, Ph.D.

Professor, ESLSCA Business School Paris

MIT Media Lab

ABSTRACT

Transformation Sociotech Design (TSD) embodies knowledge and its practical applications on how a behavioral or attitudinal changes can be achieved through purposefully designed technology-supported user experience (UX) and socially influencing environments. People continuously experience various types of engagement through social media, mobile interaction, location-based applications, and other technologically advanced environments. Often, integral parts of such sociotechnical contexts often are information systems designed to change behaviors and attitudes of their users by leveraging powers of social influence, further defined as Socially Influencing Systems (SIS).

This seminar will unfold how the dynamic evolution of digital economy will continuously reshape business practices for customer engagement and behavior change at scale. Rapidly growing connectedness will not only provide new methods for organizations to retain existing relationships with consumers, but will also open new ways to enrich customer experiences and foster innovation. Along the way, businesses and customers will naturally follow new market trends and steadily develop an understanding of the spectrum of opportunities provided by emerging technologies. People will seamlessly acquire new habits of interaction and consumption behavior, which then will set their expectations about how the UX of products and services should be designed.

This seminar will discuss how future innovations will reshape human behavior in countless ways. Novel business strategies and models will be required for creating future environments to properly respond to human activity and market dynamics. TSD will play an important role in transforming the way we live and do business. Drawing on socio-psychological theories and integrating them with new design concepts, the seminar will provide knowledge and hands-on experience on how to successfully design UX that achieves behavior change at scale. The seminar will introduce the roles of TSD, SIS, and UX, present an ecosystem of future environments, describe three generic groups of people depending on their susceptibility to SIS, explain the process of defining behavior change, and provide tools for social engineering of behavioral interventions.

This seminar will reflect on how TSD enable mechanisms to perpetually support motivation of individuals comparing to conventional methods, such as those that are based on carrots and sticks. Instead, SIS will harness social influence from crowd behavior to craft influential messaging aimed at shifting behavior and attitude of an individual, who naturally is an integral part of the same crowd. Such continuous interplay will ultimately result in an ongoing process that will reshape communities and societies without any other incentives.

Bio

Dr. Agnis Stibe is a Professor of Transformational Sociotech Design. At ESLSCA Business School Paris, he empowers people with strategies and innovations on Socially Influencing Systems, Transformational Digital Marketing, and Persuasive Behavioral Economics. At MIT Media Lab, he established research on future Persuasive Cities that are encouraging healthy and sustainable routines. He believes that our world can become a better place thought purposefully designed urban spaces that successfully blend technological advancements with human nature. His research is built upon socio-psychological theories to design long-lasting transformations of our lives. Agnis is an active member of persuasive technology community, frequently speaking at annual conferences and effectively collaborating with industry. He has worked for a number of Fortune 100 companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. Dr. Stibe has twice been recognized by the Minister of Education and Science of Latvia for his long-term creative work. He has received awards from the MIT Media Lab, Nokia Foundation, Dr. Theo and Friedl Schoeller Research Center for Business and Society, and the Latvian Fund for Education. Dr. Stibe holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Latvia, an MBA from the RTU Riga Business School, a PhD from the University of Oulu, and a postdoctoral training from the MIT Media Lab.

Home page: http://transforms.me

Course credits and course work

In order to gain the 2 ECTS credits, the student has to do the following work: Watch/read the pre-seminar videos and articles (optional: submit a summary of those to Prof. Stibe before the seminar), participate in the seminar, and do submit the post-seminar work.

Please enroll to the course by sending an email to karin.vayrynen (at) oulu.fi by Monday, 27.11.

Pre-seminar videos (esimated 2 hours)

• Transcending Instincts - https://youtu.be/DStzEQ1YrV0
• Persuasive Cities - https://youtu.be/Hy23R1GIOsQ
• Emerging Worlds - https://youtu.be/roxmHtnUWNM
• MIT Media Lab - https://youtu.be/pAkGe2PBbpY
• TEDx Interview - https://youtu.be/-HrZs08aFp8

Pre-seminar readings (estimated 8 hours)

• Stibe, A., & Larson, K. (2016). Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities. In M. Younas et al. (eds.): Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems (MobiWIS 2016), LNCS 9847 (pp. 271–282) [PDF]
• Stibe, A., & Cugelman, B. (2016). Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 65–77). Springer International Publishing [PDF]
• Stibe, A. (2015). Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 253–264). Springer International Publishing [PDF]
• Stibe, A. (2015). Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 172–183). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

Pre-seminar homework (optional)

If interested, you can prepare and email a summary essay covering the key topics of the pre-seminar videos/papers to agnis@mit.edu by November 28, 2017. If you want to do this task, you should:

• emphasize your understanding about the particular video/paper, and
• describe its relevance to your work or worldviews.

Post-seminar work (estimated 35 hours)

After the seminar, students should prepare and email their project presentations to agnis@mit.edu by December 22, 2017.

Seminar schedule and literature

Literature:

1. Hofmeister, T. B., & Stibe, A. (2017). Living Mobility Transitions towards Bicycling: Designing Practices through Co-Creation and Socially Influencing Systems. The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S3305-S3316, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352834 [PDF]

2. Noyman, A., Stibe, A., & Larson, K. (2017). Roadmap for Autonomous Cities: Sustainable Transformation of Urban Spaces. 23rd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2017), August 10-12, 2017, Boston, MA, USA [PDF]

3. Stibe, A., & Larson, K. (2016). Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities. In M. Younas et al. (eds.): Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems (MobiWIS 2016), LNCS 9847 (pp. 271–282) [PDF]

4. Stibe, A., & Cugelman, B. (2016). Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 65–77). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

5. Millonig, A., Wunsch, M., Stibe, A., Seer, S., Dai, C., Schechtner, K., & Chin, R.C.C. (2016). Gamification and Social Dynamics Behind Corporate Cycling Campaigns. Transportation Research Procedia, 19, (pp. 33–39) [PDF]

6. Stibe, A. (2015). Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 253–264). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

7. Stibe, A. (2015). Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 172–183). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

8. Cyr, D., Head, M., Lim, E., & Stibe, A. (2015). The Art of Online Persuasion through Design: The Role of Issue Involvement as it Influences Users based on Prior Knowledge. International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Fort Worth, Texas, USA. (Received the best paper award.) [PDF]

9. Wunsch, M., Stibe, A., Millonig, A., Seer, S., Dai, C., Schechtner, K., & Chin, R. C. C. (2015). What Makes You Bike? Exploring Persuasive Strategies to Encourage Low-Energy Mobility. In Persuasive Technology(pp. 53–64). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

10. Stibe, A. (2014). Socially Influencing Systems: Persuading People to Engage with Publicly Displayed Twitter-based Systems. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis. PhD thesis [PDF]