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DDM110 (2021-GS1) Design for behavioral change
This course aims to equip Master students of the TU/e with the knowledge and skills regarding the design of technologies that can help people change behaviours without coercion, manipulation, or deceit. Our approach emphasizes how theory can inform the design of interactive technologies. Various theories can be usefully applied, which originate from diverse fields such as health psychology, organizational psychology, social psychology, communication science and behavioural economics. We emphasize theory because research has shown that basing behaviour change interventions on theory can lead to better results. Furthermore, we wish to provide designers with a theoretical foundation that can help them engage knowledgably with scientists from different domains working in this area and to be able to look beyond the specifics of a design challenge and contemporary technologies to generalizable approaches and models. The course covers the following topics: • A structured approach to analysing behaviour change and designing interventions • 5 well known theories of behaviour change • 4 design frameworks for designing behaviour change support systems • Evaluation strategies of behaviour change support systems • Ethics of designing behaviour change support systems The course follows a two-pronged learning approach: • Focusing on knowledge acquisition where students familiarize with theories through lectures and self-study. • Learning to integrate and apply such theories in design through hands on workshops and a design case. The former is primarily individual work and is assessed individually by a mid-term written test. The latter is teamwork, completed by a report, and is assessed as a group, though individual grades are given depending on contribution to the teamwork. A course reader is provided that is based on related literature and textbooks.