Title:	AiREAS: Sustainocracy for a Healthy City
Authors:	Jean-Paul Close
Keywords:	Sustainocracy
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	In the interest of solving many of our societal problems (e.g., air pollution, sustainability, health issues), technological innovations alone are not enough: Human behavior also needs to change. Research into persuasive technology (Fogg 2003; IJsselsteijn et al. 2006) investigates how we can use the technology that people interact with while making the relevant decisions (e.g., in regard to their car) needed to influence human behavior or thinking. This relatively young research area promises to provide solutions and deliver the insights needed to change the human behavior related to our societal problems. At the same time, this area still needs study to uncover many of the basic mechanisms of how technology can help people change and adapt (see also, Midden and Ham 2012: Persuasive technology to promote pro-environmental behavior). One of the open questions is in regard to the crossroads of usability and persuasion: What are the interactions between the usability of technology and the persuasiveness of technology? A highly motivated team of students (Joyce Brouns, Tim van den Boom, Marjan Hagelaars, Relinde van Loo and Daniëlle Ramp) set themselves up to analyze this interaction in a very societally relevant application domain: The newly developed AiREAS App, which is intended to provide users with information about the air quality in their direct surroundings as measured by the AiREAS measurement network in the city of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. This app may contain a variety of persuasive strategies (e.g., providing information about air pollution levels). Still, usability problems with the app might diminish its persuasive power, and even more complex interactions between usability and persuasiveness might be identified. The report on this research can be read in the following pages and is one of the first steps into this important new domain. These are important issues, as much from a societal perspective as a scientific perspective. The full power of persuasive technology (in helping to solve current societal issues) can only be unleashed when we better understand this kind of technology, and are able to build systems that are both usable and persuasive. One of the biggest complexities we encounter when desiring the transformation or evolution of a reality is the way people relate to a reigning culture or paradigm through a particular mindset. For them, this perception of a current reality gives comfort and security. It is intensely difficult when this mindset needs to be revised voluntarily for the sake of sustainable human progress. What is sustainable human progress? Why would anyone want to participate in a transformation? With what authority can we ask people to look at their reality in a different way? Why would anyone let go of a lifestyle to adopt a new one? My own breakthroughs in awareness have been described in depth in Chap. 2 of the book on Phase 1 as manifesting in the origin of STIR and subsequently AiREAS. This new state of mind enabled me to look at our reality in a totally new way. I saw the complex duality of our current human existence on planet Earth:
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/53793
ISBN:	978-3-319-45620-1
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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