Motivating the motivators: Lessons learned from the design and evaluation of a social persuasion system

This paper presents the lessons learned in designing and evaluating a social persuasion system. This social persuasion system, called the Playful Bottle, consists of a mobile phone attached to an everyday drinking mug, and motivates office workers to drink healthy quantities of water. This study discusses the results of a 10-week quantitative user study and qualitative focus group interviews. We describe how users interacted with one other through the system’s care-giving and care-receiving interface and how the system’s social effect influenced drinking behaviors. Based on our findings, we offer lessons learned on how to design an effective social persuasion system. The important lessons leaned in our finding: Motivate the motivator, reduce pressure and lessen the feeling of deprivation, and combine positive with negative reinforcements.