Purpose of the Session: Discuss experiences in developing and conducting research on mobile technologies, persuasion and behavior change.

Convener: Craig Lefebvre

A. Levels from which to focus research efforts (all represented by participants).

• Basic processes to understand how persuasive effects occur and can be manipulated as an independent variable.

• Applied research that seeks to understand how users interact and use mobile technologies in everyday life or in specific situations to solve particular types of problems.

• Outcome or impact research that tend to be longer term studies to develop mobile technology applications for different types of behavior adoption and change, social engagement and social change.

Each of these types of studies appeal to different types of funding sources (foundations, industry, government). A major issue for progress in this area is to raise the visibility of and openness to funding for mobile persuasion projects.

B. Problems in doing research in this area.

Participant recruitment - pros and cons of using recruitment firms where 'naive' participants can be hard to find; use of naturalistic settings and variations of intercept interviews and user testing (coffee bars, internet cafes, 'waiting areas'); development of recruitment pools of 'pre-approved participants who have already completed IRB forms and given permission for later contact for studies; recruitment through charitable organizations with donations being made to that organization for successful recruitment of staff and volunteers.

Gaining informed consent via cell phones vs in-person and web-based methods. The question is whether the latter methods introduce some type of systematic bias into the participant pool.

Reluctance to download experimental applications to their personal phones.

__Using cell phones provided by the project__, while it gets around the download issue, also introduces new probelms related to the unfamiliarity to user has with their interface and navigation.

Huge difficulty and complexity in programming apps for different operating systems.

Resorting to SMS and MMS as the lowest common denominator for most studies.