Combining User-Centered and Persuasive Design for Enhancing Consumer-facing Products

Persuasion is the process of changing individuals' attitude, or behavior, or both. The study of persuasion in the context of technology has led to building models for designing persuasive software. Following these models' specifications has been believed to enhance system persuasive effect. In this research, we aim at answering the question of the suitability of persuasive system design models for different software systems. We investigate the role of user-centered design approaches, in electing concepts of persuasive system models, in order to increase persuasiveness. Moreover, we test the effect of performing us- ability tests on alternative onboarding scenarios, while A/B testing small changes to the existing onboarding design. The methodology of this research defines an artifact that we want to build. The artifact is a system that provides the feature of renting used clothes through “Le Tote". We gather information about the users’ needs and the stakeholders desires of building a persuasive system, and we then use persuasive system models to fullfil these needs, and build the artifact. After that, we evaluate the artifact and the designs through usability testing of the onboarding scenarios, and A/B testing the minor changes in the existing design. Combining user-centered design approaches with persuasive system design models helps in electing specific persuasive concepts which are suitable for the nature of the technology. We conclude that not all concepts from persuasive models can be applied to all technologies. Moreover, using usability tests in the whole product, in addition to A/B tests on minor design changes, leads to revealing the need to focus on micro-interactions and language in persuasive scenarios