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From CS294-1 Spring 2011

CS294-1 Human-Centered Design: Behavior Change

Instructor: Prof. John Canny (EECS)

MW 10:30-12, in 310 Soda Hall

Course Description

The topic of the course this semester is *Behavior Change*, the science of how people adapt, and how we can facilitate more positive behavior. Behavior change is at the root of many current social challenges: health care, energy conservation, sustainability, education. A recent NIH solicitation acknowledged that: "the single greatest opportunity to improve health and reduce premature deaths lies in personal behavior". Around 40% of the total US energy budget is for personal use, and consumption and discarding of goods are determined largely by individual behavior. Behavior change has become a very active research area of late, and is deepening our understanding of conscious and intuitive choice mechanisms. This is a design course, and we are very interested in technical interventions (reminders, educational materials, games, videos, "nudges" of various sorts) that facilitate change. But we will also delve deeply into the theory of behavior change, drawing from a variety of sources: learning science and psychology, ethnographic methods and conversation analysis. Course projects may be either designs or human studies of novel behavior change techniques.

Recommended Books are here.

Course Outline

Week 1

Lecture 1: Introduction

Theories of Behavior Change

Week 2, 1/24/11

Lecture 2: Reasoned Action, Planned Behavior, Integrated Behavior Model

Lecture 3: Goal-Setting and Trans-Theoretical Models

Week 3, 1/31/11

Lecture 4: Examples based on models: Ubifit and TTM

Lecture 5: Social Cognitive Theory and Self-Efficacy

Week 4, 2/7/11

Lecture 6: Applications of self-efficacy in behavior change technologies

Lecture 7: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motives, Personality and persuasion

Changing Minds: Biases in Decisions, Dual Process Models

Week 5, 2/14/11

Lecture 8: Behavioral Economics: Choices, Values, Frames

Lecture 9: Behavioral Economics Applications

Project Planning (due 2/28/11)

Week 6, 2/21/11

Holiday

Lecture 10: Dual Process Models

Week 7, 2/28/11

Project Planning

Lecture 11: The Elaboration Likelihood Model

Persuasion by Language

Week 7, 3/7/11

Lecture 12: Architectures for Dual Reasoning

Lecture 13: Framing and Metaphor

Week 8, 3/14/11

Lecture 14: Psychology of Life Stories

Lecture 15: Discursive Psychology

Week 10 3/28/11

Lecture 16: Maps of Meaningful Action

Lecture 17: Action Maps of Political Thought

Mental Health and Behavior Change

Week 11 4/4/11

Lecture 18: Cognitive Therapy

Lecture 19: Behavioral Activation

Week 12 4/11/11

Lecture 20: Positive Psychology I

Lecture 21: Positive Psychology II

Week 13 4/18/11

Lecture 22: Narrative Therapy

Lecture 23: Sports Psychology

Week 14 4/25/11

Lecture 24: Action Maps III: Narrative

Lecture 25: Wrap-up

Week 15

Weds, May 4th: (320 Soda) Project Presentations