Goals

• To help me understand who is in the class and why

• To help me get a general sense of what type of final project you may like to do and in what area

• To help me find some recent research in behavior change that is relevant to your interests

Part 1: 

Please send an email with subject line "4.208 assignment 1" to my email and with the following information and answers to questions:  

Background

• Full name: 

• Preferred nickname (if any):

• Email: 

• Phone:  

• College/University:

• Degree program: 

• Laboratory (if any): 

• Year (e.g. 3rd year Ph.D., Senior):

• Previous degrees/schools/labs (if any): 

• Web address to picture of you online (if convenient, to help learn names):

Your goals for this course

• What would you most like to get out of it? 

• What is your primary technical, architectural, and/or design interest?

• What types of interface devices do you see yourself designing in the future?

Skill sets for this course

• If you are a graduate student, what is your research about? 

• Have you ever designed a product, technology, environment, etc. that attempted to motivate behavior change? 

• Describe your programming experience/comfort level (i.e. which language(s) you have used and how experienced you are with them, if any):

• Have you worked with any user interface rapid prototyping tools (e.g. Flash, JavaScript)? If so, characterize your ability: 

• Have you ever worked on interface design for a commercial product? If yes, briefly describe the situation and product:

• To describe an idea, are you most comfortable using text, sketches, renderings, or some form of digital media? Why?

• Are you comfortable interacting with strangers (e.g. interviewing them)? Why or why not?

• Have you ever worked on an experimental project where human subjects were recruited, data was collected, and then data was statistically analyzed? If so, please describe your role. 

General areas of interest

From the list below, indicate the topics for which you'd be most interested in designing technologies/environments that motivate behavior change: 

• Personal healthcare: exercise

• Personal healthcare: nutrition

• Personal healthcare: other __________________

• Personal finance

• Entertainment

• Social interaction

• Energy/resource conservation

• Personal safety

• Personal responsibility

• Education

• Political activism

• Workplace safety

• Other: __________________

Administrivia

• At this time, how likely are you to register for this course?

• Any special issues you'd like me to be aware of?

Part 2: 

Go online to the electronic databases section of your university. Based upon your research or interests, spend 15 minutes searching for several recent papers that discuss behavior change/persuasion as they relate to your interests. For example, if your research interest is energy you might look for several papers that discuss how to persuade people to change their energy consumption patterns. Limit your search to papers published in the last 5 years.  

Bring a clean printout of the full paper you think is most interesting to class on Tuesday, September 14 and email the reference to my email when you find it. 

Last modified: Wednesday, September 08, 2004