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Organic dirt on touch surfaces can be biological contaminants (microbes) or nutrients for those but is often invisible by the human eye causing challenges for evaluating the need for cleaning. Using hyperspectral scanning algorithm, touch surface cleanliness monitoring by optical imaging was studied in a real-life hospital environment. As the highlight, a human eye invisible stain from a dirty chair armrest was revealed manually with algorithms including threshold levels for intensity and clustering analysis with two excitation lights (green and red) and one bandpass filter (wavelength λ = 500 nm). The same result was confirmed by automatic k-means clustering analysis from the entire dirty data of visible light (red, green and blue) and filters 420 to 720 nm with 20 nm increments. Overall, the collected touch surface samples (N = 156) indicated the need for cleaning in some locations by the high culturable bacteria and adenosine triphosphate counts despite the lack of visible dirt. Examples of such locations were toilet door lock knobs and busy registration desk armchairs. Thus, the studied optical imaging system utilizing the safe visible light area shows a promising method for touch surface cleanliness evaluation in real-life environments.

Organic dirt on touch surfaces can be biological contaminants (microbes) or nutrients for those but is often invisible by the human eye causing challenges for evaluating the need for cleaning. Using hyperspectral scanning algorithm, touch surface cleanliness monitoring by optical imaging was studied in a real‐life hospital environment. As the highlight, a human eye invisible stain from a dirty chair armrest was revealed manually with algorithms including threshold levels for intensity and clustering analysis with two excitation lights (green and red) and one bandpass filter (wavelength λ = 500 nm). The same result was confirmed by automatic k‐means clustering analysis from the entire dirty data of visible light (red, green and blue) and filters 420 to 720 nm with 20 nm increments. Overall, the collected touch surface samples (N = 156) indicated the need for cleaning in some locations by the high culturable bacteria and adenosine triphosphate counts despite the lack of visible dirt. Examples of such locations were toilet door lock knobs and busy registration desk armchairs. Thus, the studied optical imaging system utilizing the safe visible light area shows a promising method for touch surface cleanliness evaluation in real‐life environments., Touch surface cleanliness monitoring by optical imaging was studied in a real‐life hospital environment using both manual and automatic hyperspectral scanning algorithms. As the highlight, a human eye invisible stain from a dirty chair armrest was revealed. Thus, the optical imaging system in the safe visible light area shows a promising method for touch surface cleanliness evaluation in real‐life environments.

Inspired by recent debates on drone technology and privacy protection, this research examines how negative consequences of drone usage can be mitigated by tailoring information about drone employment to the environmental context in which they are used. Additionally, this study seeks to clarify the role of information needs people have when confronted with drones in different settings. Using virtual reality environments and a dedicated virtual app providing opportunities for the public to learn more about drone usage, participants were confronted with drone surveillance at either a business area, at a park, or during an event, and received transparent information on drone usage or a neutral message proving no information on drone usage. Additionally, participants could obtain more information on drone usage by clicking on one or more information buttons in the app. Results show that, compared to an event, participants were less acceptant of drones in a business area and even less so at the park. Further analyses indicated that heightened transparency perceptions resulted in higher levels of trust, perceived control, and drone acceptance. Finally, participants particularly sought information on how drones are used in the business area and park environment, whereas a need for privacy information stood out in the park context. These findings testify to the importance of careful consideration of the environmental context and related communication needs people have when informing the public about drone usage.

Persuasive technology is a vibrant interdisciplinary research field, focusing on the study, design, development, and evaluation of information technologies aimed at influencing people’s attitudes or behaviors through open and transparent means. The International Conference on Persuasive Technology series brings together researchers, designers, practitioners and business people from various disciplines and a wide variety of application domains. The research community seeks to facilitate healthier lifestyles, make people feel or behave more safely, reduce consumption of renewable resources, among other notable goals, by, for instance, designing software applications, monitoring through sensor technologies, analyzing obtained data, and providing various types of coaching for users. The 14th International Conference on Persuasive Technology was hosted by the Department of Communication and Internet Studies at the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol, Cyprus in April 2019, and organized in collaboration with the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Wollongong, Australia. In previous years similar highly successful conferences were organized in Waterloo (Canada), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Salzburg (Austria), Chicago (United States), Padua (Italy), Sydney (Australia), Linköping (Sweden), Columbus (United States), Copenhagen (Denmark), Claremont (United States), Oulu (Finland), Palo Alto (United States), and Eindhoven (Netherlands). The conference addressed a wide variety of topics regarding the development of persuasive and behavior change support systems. This year papers were also solicited for two specific topics, namely Personal informatics and Gamification and gamified persuasive technologies.

Children with exercise-induced asthma face several challenges in their daily life, which can improve by proper self-management practices. AIRplay combines biomedical sensing with gamified environments to improve physical conditioning and self-management of asthma among children aged 7 to 9 years old. The goal is to develop a proof-of-concept of coaching application that monitors physical activity of a young asthma patient, provide feedback based on this activity data, and integrates this application with an interactive playground to improve fitness. We discuss three areas where we can improve the current management of asthma among children based on literature and interviews with health care professionals. We present the coaching application and the interactive playground game, followed by a discussion where we discuss the current proof-of-concept using the Persuasive Design Model (PSD). We also foresee some challenges for future development and research.

Persuasive technologies use a variety of strategies and principles to encourage people to adopt and maintain beneficial behaviours and attitudes. In this paper we investigate the influence of Cialdini’s seven persuasive principles on people’s choices, actions and behaviour. In contrast to related work investigating perceived persusaion, this study analyses actual persuasion. We also investigate the impact of personality, age and gender on people’s susceptibility to different message types. Furthermore, we investigate if people’s susceptibility to different persuasive messages is consistent over time. The findings suggest that certain persuasive principles have a greater influence on a person’s actions than others, with Reciprocity and Liking being the most effective. Our results differ from work investigating perceived persuasiveness, suggesting that what people perceive to be more persuasive is not necessarily what will persuade them to perform an action. Moreover, the study showed that people’s susceptibility to different principles is dependent on their personality traits, and it remains constant with time. The findings from this study have implications for future work on personalising persuasive strategies and designing digital behaviour change interventions.

This paper describes an investigation into the effectiveness of ArguMessage, a system that uses argumentation schemes and limited user input to semi-automatically generate persuasive messages encouraging behaviour change that follow specific argumentation patterns. We conducted user studies in the domains of healthy eating and email security to investigate its effectiveness. Our results show that ArguMessage in general supported users in generating messages based on the argumentation schemes. However, there were some issues in particular with copying the example messages, and some system improvements need to be made. Participants were generally satisfied with the messages produced, with the exception of those produced by two schemes (‘Argument from memory with goal’ and ‘Argument from values with goal’) which were removed after the first study.

Selecting and tuning modes are useful in ultrasonic guided wave non-destructive testing (NDT) since certain modes at various center frequencies are sensitive to specific types of defects. Ideally one should be able to select both the mode and the center frequency of the launched waves. We demonstrated that an affordable laser diode array can selectively launch either the S0 or A0 ultrasonic wave mode at a chosen center frequency into a polymer plate. A fiber-coupled diode array (4 elements) illuminated a 2 mm thick acrylic plate. A predetermined time delay matching the selected mode and frequency was employed between the output of the elements. The generated ultrasound was detected by a 215 kHz piezo receiver. Our results imply that this array permits non-contacting guided wave ultrasonic NDT. The solution is small, affordable, and robust in comparison to conventional pulsed lasers. In addition, it does not require experienced operators. peerReviewed