Testing my concept

I sent out a survey a few weeks ago to try get my target audience. I needed people that were sedentary and played social games. I got 11 suitable volunteers. I then gave 8 willing volunteers a questionnaire (Ralf Schwarzt & Britta Peaner derived the questionnaire) to find out their self-efficacy levels towards fitness. I divided the group into 2 groups a) high level of self efficacy b) low level of self efficacy. Each volunteer was given a pedometer. 

I was provided pedometers by Breda a supervisor in CIT's GYM. She had previously used them in a pedometer challenge for the college. I text each participant for 4 nights in week 1 documenting their step count for each day. In week 2 I will request their step count and then reward the user by crediting them energy in the YourCity beta game. All participants will be given a questionnaire after the test to see their opinion on the system.

Online Presentation

I have booked a meeting with B.J. Fogg but for me to illustrate my project I had to place a presentation online. I did this using Prezi  which is a zooming presentation editor. I am very impressed with prezi as it gives presentations away more technologic feel about them. I will more than likely use this for my final presentation as in the middle of the presentation you can zoom out/in and pan around the presentation. My prezi can be found at http://prezi.com/j9cwrwy-z2xl/persuasive-technology-and-facebook/. 

Persuasive Technology and Facebook on Prezi

PS. Only the concept has been filled out for Fogg. Researching, Testing etc will be filled out later on in the year.

Creating a beta version of YourCity

I am going to use Game maker 8 to create a prototype of YourCity. The game will have the main functionality but not with the expected graphics. Using this game I will be able to test the concept. I am using pedometers to simulate the mobile phone application. 

GameMaker 8 : Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games within very little time. You can make games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects, and even 3D games! And when you've become more experienced, there is a built-in programming language, which gives you the full flexibility of creating games with Game Maker. What is best, is the fact that Game Maker can be used free of charge.

Survey Online

My survey is online and can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3X7RXH3. I have sent the survey out to all my contacts and asked them to send it out to all their contacts hopefully I will gather sufficient information to have accurate results. I will have to upgrade to a select account.

This will cost 25euro but I will be able to analyze my results with away better features. If I had known this I would have upgraded at the start so I could have made a survey with unlimited questions. I will have 1000 response limit with a select account with the basic account I had a limit of 100 responses.

My Sampling Survey

I'am going to use sample surveying to prove the demand/need for my concept in the real world. I created the survey using SurveyMonkey which provides survey and questionnaire software for free you can get a gold account for extra functionality. The major fault of using the free account is that I was limited to 10 questions ad I cant access the logic functionality either but I adapted to it to suit my sampling survey. I have created 3 sections in the survey. The first section is to establish the different groups and to identify my target audience. This section will be used to see what groups selected which options farther on in the survey.

Section 2 is to gather information on their opinions on smart phones as half the project uses smart phone as a persuasive technology. This will gather which groups have smart phones and if they use it to improve their lifestyle.

The final section then is to get an understanding of their opinions of online social games and the last question is a scenario that my game could fit into.

I have spent the last two days making up this survey and have got 3 people each from different age groups to get their opinions of the survey this was very useful and this is the third different survey after gathering negative/positive feedback from the testers. i will be hoping to use snowball surveying to gather the maximum amount of people to fill out the survey. I completed the survey on Friday evening but will send it out on Monday afternoon as I taught people would not be bothered filling out a survey on Friday evening a Monday would be more suited. 

B.J. Fogg

During my writing up the first draft of "Trying to combat sedentary lifestyle" (literature review 1) I did a lot of research on persuasive technology and Facebook. During this research I came across allot of studies done by Fogg and he is referenced numerous times in the thesis as his work is very relevant to my thesis. He works in Standford Persuasive Lab which shows all his research. The lab has documented captology (figure 1) and is in the process of creating a book based on the psychology of Facebook which is very interesting highlighting the persuasive methods that are used within in Facebook. You can find all his work at his website http://www.bjfogg.com/. My literature review is based on most of Foggs research. I will try to get a interview with Fogg in the near future for my thesis showing him a presentation of my concept to get his opinion.

My Thesis

This week I have been putting a lot of time into my thesis. I have my first draft of my first chapter "Combating sedentary Lifestyle" (literature review) 2000 words. I also created the headings for chapter 2 "Social web" and the opening few pages. I also have completed the first draft of Methods & Methodology chapter 1000 words. The more i write up my thesis the better idea of my overall project and regret not starting to write up the thesis sooner in the semester. The writing up takes a lot more time that I first presumed it is a tedious progress and needs to be given the appropriate attention since I will more than likely not creating a product now I can give the thesis all the attention it needs.