Postulates of a PSD

Question 1

Information technology is never neutral

Answer 1

Information technology is always influencing people’s attitudes and behaviours in one way or another. Behind every technology are designers, engineers and a company often with a different intent than the intent that is projected.

Question 2

People like their views about the world to be organized and consistent

Answer 2

Based on the idea of commitment and cognitive consistency. If systems support the making of commitments, users will more likely be persuaded. Cognitive consistency becomes important because inconsistency may motivate attitude change.

Question 3

Direct and indirect routes are key persuasion strategies

Answer 3

An individual who carefully evaluates the content of the persuasive message may be approached by the direct route, whereas an individual who is less thoughtful and uses simple cues or stereotypes for evaluating the information may be persuaded through the indirect route.
Direct and indirect processes may act simultaneously and both strategies may be supported through numerous software system features.

Question 4

Persuasion is often incremental

Answer 4

It is easier to initiate people into doing a series of actions through incremental suggestions rather than a one-time consolidated suggestion. This implies that a persuasive system should enable making incremental steps toward target behaviour.

Question 5

Persuasion through persuasive systems should always be open

Answer 5

It is very important to reveal the designer bias behind of the persuasive system. If the bias remains unclear, the system may either lose some of the persuasiveness or they may end up misleading their users.

Question 6

Persuasive systems should aim at unobtrusiveness

Answer 6

They should avoid disturbing users while they are performing their primary tasks with the aid of the system. The principle of unobtrusiveness also means that the opportune (or inopportune) moments for a given situation should be carefully considered.

Question 7

Persuasive systems should aim at being both useful and easy to use

Answer 7

This includes a multitude of components, such as responsiveness, ease of access, lack of errors, convenience and high information quality, positive user esperience, attractiveness and user loyalty.
These are general software qualities and not specific to persuasive systems only.