DESIGNING PERSUASIVE AMBIENT MIRRORS
TO MOTIVATE DESIRABLE LIFESTYLE
Tatsuo Nakajima
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Keywords: Persuasive Technology, Ambient Display, Interaction Design.
Abstract: Our daily lives are recently very busy and stressful, and our time spending to keep desirable lifestyle is cut
down although we know that high quality lifestyle is very important for maintaining the health of both our
body and mind. One of reasons that we tend to lead a sloppy lifestyle is that there is no adequate feedback to
us about our current behavior, and it is not easy to motivate us to keep desirable lifestyle in stressful
everyday lives. These are especially becoming serious social problems in many urban cities. We are
demonstrating a couple of persuasive ambient mirrors whose expression evokes our emotion to motivate to
change our current undesirable behavior. In the systems, persuasive ambient mirrors represent adequate
feedback to reflect our current behavior to boost our positive emotion to motivate desirable lifestyle and
change undesirable behavior by evoking our negative emotion. The paper presents two case studies that
motivate desirable lifestyle, and extracts some design issues based on the experiences with the case studies.
1 INTRODUCTION
Our urban daily lives are extremely busy and
stressful due to dramatic economic changes as
shown in Figure 1. In Tokyo, for example, commuter
trains are very crowded in the early morning and late
night everyday, and people access a variety of
information through mobile phones. Most of people
do not have enough time to keep desirable lifestyle.
We know that a variety of daily activities such as
cooking, cleaning, exercising and saving energy and
money are very important for our health, well-being,
and environmental sustainability. These activities are
very useful for desirable lifestyle, but it is not easy
to change the current sloppy behavior in a stressful
daily life. One of solutions of the problem is to
return adequate feedback that reflects people’s
current behavior through computer mediated
persuasive technologies (Jafarinaimi, 2005); (Lin,
2006); (Consolvo, 2008); (Toscos, 2008). These
previous studies show the effectiveness of some case
studies, but do not discuss general design issues for
developing persuasive ambient mirrors to change
human behavior and attitude systematically.
In our daily lives, a mirror reflects our figure to
show our appearance. Using a mirror allows us to
know whether we are well or not, and whether our
makeup and clothes are fit or not. A mirror has a
power to make what are invisible from us visible. In
a past work, Fujinami et. al. have developed a mirror
to superimpose useful information in an ambient
form (Fujinami, 2005). We believe that mirrors are
adequate devices to reflect our current behavior to
return feedback because we sometimes remind
ourselves in front of a mirror. Future smart mirrors
can be used to persuade people to change their lazy
behavior to motivate desirable lifestyle. We believe
that the pervasive installation of these mirrors
presenting persuasive visual information is
promising to improve our daily lives.

Figure 1: Busy and Stressful Urban Life.
We have developed two case studies to develop
persuasive ambient mirrors presenting visual
information to motive desirable lifestyle, and show
some technical details behind the case studies. These
persuasive ambient mirrors sense the current
157
Nakajima T..
DESIGNING PERSUASIVE AMBIENT MIRRORS TO MOTIVATE DESIRABLE LIFESTYLE.
DOI: 10.5220/0003319801570162
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communication Systems (PECCS-2011), pages
157-162
ISBN: 978-989-8425-48-5
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)


behavior of the user and reflect the behavior in on
peripheral displays as ambient information. In our
approach, these peripheral mirrors embedded
pervasively in our surrounding environments present
feedback information in an ambient style not to
increase our cognitive overload.
In this paper, we discuss how persuasive ambient
mirrors are effective in motivating the user to change
his/her undesirable behavior. The emotional
engagement is very useful in making the user to
keep desirable behavior although he/she considers it
to be hard and challenging. For example, “quit
meters”
 provide smokers with constant feedback on
how much money is wasted and how many minutes
of life are lost. But the feedback they provide lacks
the engagement and fun that the games provide,
lessening their emotional impact to change
undesirable behavior.
Section 2 shows the first case study called Mona
Lisa Bookshelf. In Section 3, our second case study
called EcoIsland is described. We show some design
issues to develop persuasive ambient mirrors in
Section 4. The design issues includes how to attach
the meaning to ambient information to persuade the
user, how to design the feedback loop between
human behavior and the ambient information, and
how to manage the interaction between the user and
the persuasive ambient mirrors. We finally conclude
the paper by showing future directions in Section 5.
2 MONA LISA BOOKSHELF
Resources shared by a number of people, such as a
public toilet or a bookshelf in a research laboratory,
tend to deteriorate quickly in a process called the
tragedy of the commons. This happens because each
individual derives a personal benefit from using the
resource, while any costs are shared between all the
users, leading to reckless use. Garret Hardin, the
ecologist who popularized the concept, noted that
this belongs to the category of problems that cannot
be solved by technology alone, requiring instead a
change in human behavior (Hardin, 1968). Mona
Lisa Bookshelf, is aimed at keeping a bookshelf
organized. It tries to encourage users to keep books
in order and to return missing books, but also to take
books out every now and then for reading. Each
book in the shelf is linked with a piece of a digital
image of the Mona Lisa. Like a picture puzzle, the
image changes according to how the books are
positioned. A high-quality flat display placed near
the bookshelf shows the image to the users.
The tracking of a user's behavior is based on
optically detecting books in the shelf. In the
prototype system, visual tags are attached to the
spines of the books to facilitate their detection and
identification. Visual tags are also attached to the
corners of the shelf to determine its dimensions
(Figure 2 (Left)). The detection system (Figure 2
(Middle)) comprises the following hardware: a
digital video camera (iSight by Apple), a high-
resolution digital camera (D50 by Nikon) and two
infrared distance detectors (GP2D12 by SHARP).
The distance sensors and the digital video camera
are used to detect whether the user is manipulating
books in the shelf. OpenCV, a real-time computer
vision software library, is used to analyze the video
signal. As soon as the user is seen leaving the shelf,
the high-resolution still camera takes a picture of it
and all the books contained within it. Images
captured by the still camera are analyzed by the
VisualCodes software library, which recognizes the
visual tags attached to the books. The system is
shown installed in Figure 2 (Right). Each visual
code yields data regarding its position, alignment
and identity. This is then translated into context
information that describes the bookshelf's width and
height, which books are currently contained in shelf,
and how they are aligned and ordered. This
information is then passed to the feedback logic
component. The above approach is able to observe
how the user uses her bookshelf passively without
requesting extra actions to play the game.

Figure 2: Mona Lisa Bookshelf prototype installation.
In this system, the feedback logic aims to
encourage the following ideal behavior: 1) books
should be arranged correctly and aligned neatly; and
2) at least one of the books should be read at least
once per week. The correct arrangement of the
books is pre-programmed, and could be e.g.
alphabetical. User behavior is compared to this ideal,
and translated to feedback as described below.
Mona Lisa Bookshelf also offers two expression
styles to return feedback to the user to encourage
cleaning his/her bookshelf or reading books in the
following ways. When a book is removed from the
shelf, the corresponding piece of the Mona Lisa
image also disappears. If books are lying on their
PECCS 2011 - International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communication Systems
158


face or otherwise misaligned, the pieces of the image
also become misaligned, distorting the picture.
When the books are arranged neatly, Mona Lisa
smiles contently. The assumption is that users are
aware of how da Vinci's Mona Lisa is supposed to
look like, and as when completing a picture puzzle,
inherently prefer the correct solution to a distorted
image. The feedback thus provides clues and
motivation for keeping the bookshelf organized. The
left picture shown in Figure 3 is an example of a
distorted image. Also, if none of the books are
removed from the shelf for over a week, Mona Lisa
starts getting visibly older. The right picture shows
and example of an aged portrait. As soon as one of
the books is removed from the shelf, she regains her
youth.

Figure 3: Two example outputs of the Mona Lisa
Bookshelf. The image on the left shows that some books
are tilted and in the wrong order. Some books are also
missing. The image on the right side indicates that none of
books have been picked up for a long time.
3 ECOISLAND
Global warming caused by greenhouse gases
released into the atmosphere through the actions of
man is believed to be a major threat to the earth's
ecology (IPCC 2007). Efforts to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions come in two forms: technological
solutions and changes in human behavior.
Technological solutions broadly include improving
energy efficiency and developing cleaner energy
sources. Dramatic changes in human behavior will
be necessary if catastrophic climate change is to be
avoided.
Public and private efforts to change individual
behavior towards more environmentally friendly
practices usually rely on education, but there are
psychological limits to the ability of education alone
to effect behavioral change. Even when a person
full-well knows that a particular behavior is
detrimental enough to their long-term well-being to
offset any possible short-term benefits, they may still
irrationally choose the short-term indulgence. Future
consequences, while widely known, are easily
ignored in the present.
EcoIsland is a game-like application intended to
be used as a background activity by an ecologically
minded family in the course of their normal daily
activities. A display installed in the kitchen or
another prominent place in the household presents a
virtual island. Each family member is represented on
the island by an avatar (Figure 4). The family sets a
target CO2 emission level (e.g. national average
minus 20%) and the system tracks their approximate
current emissions using sensors and self-reported
data. If the emissions exceed the target level, the
water around the island begins to rise, eventually
sweeping away the avatars' possessions and resulting
in a game over.

Figure 4: Some Screenshots of EcoIsland.
On their mobile phones, the participants have a
list of actions that they may take to reduce the
emissions: turning down the air conditioning by one
degree, taking the train instead of the car, et cetera.
Upon completing an action, a participant reports
using the phone, and the water level reacts
accordingly. Reported activities are also shown in
speech bubbles above the corresponding avatars. A
lack of activity causes the avatars to suggest actions.
Participants can also see neighboring islands and
their activities in the display, and can list buy and
sell offers for emission rights on a marketplace.
Trading is conducted using a virtual currency
obtained from a regular allowance. The credits are
also used to buy improvements and decorations to
the island, so successful sellers can afford to
decorate their island more, while heavy emitters
have to spend their allowance on emission rights.
The general approach from ambient lifestyle
feedback systems is to provide a feedback loop for
user behavior. The virtual island shown in the
display acts as a metaphor and makes the
DESIGNING PERSUASIVE AMBIENT MIRRORS TO MOTIVATE DESIRABLE LIFESTYLE
159


participants conscious of the ecological
consequences of their choices and activities. We also
tap into social psychology, attempting to exploit
social facilitation and conforming behavior to
encourage the desired behavior. Social facilitation is
the phenomenon where a person performs better at a
task when someone else, e.g. a colleague or a
supervisor, is watching (Zajonc, 1965). Conforming
behavior is the desire not to act against group
consensus (Asch, 1955). EcoIsland's design
facilitates these by involving the whole family, and
by presenting the participants' activity reports in the
speech bubbles and providing contribution charts
and activity histories. On the other hand, the fact that
the game is played by a family unit instead of an
individual means that participants can also agree to
assign tasks to certain members.
Lastly, there is the trading system, which is based
on the same principle as industry level emissions
trading systems: reductions should be carried out in
places where it is easiest to do so. A family that finds
it easy to make significant reductions can sell
emission rights to households that find it difficult
due to e.g. location or job. This should make it
possible to attain the same amount of total
reductions with a lower total cost (measured in
disutility), promoting use of the system.
4 EXPERIENCES WITH
PERSUASIVE AMBIENT
MIRRORS
In this section, we describe how to design persuasive
ambient mirrors to motivate desirable lifestyle based
on our experiences with building case studies
described in previous sections. We found that three
issues are important in our experiences. The first
issue is how to design persuasive ambient mirrors
and how to attach the meaning to the expressions on
the mirrors. The second issue is how to control the
timing of feedback to users. Finally, the third issue is
how to manage the interaction between the mirrors
and users. In the following sections, we show our
findings while conducting user studies of our case
studies.
4.1 Persuasive Information
In our experiences, we found that human preferred
the Mona Lisa over the abstract and the still life
paintings. The reason given was that more figurative
paintings were considered to be more ``intuitive''.
While any visual representation can be used to relay
information, shapes that come with pre-attached
meanings (e.g. ``a tree withering is a negative
thing'') are more capable of evoking emotional
engagement. The meaning attached to an expression
on a mirror is essential to design the persuasiveness
in our approach.
When designing persuasive ambient mirrors, two
meanings need to be attached to expressions on the
mirrors. The first meaning is the metaphor
visualizing the user's lifestyle. Also, the metaphor
shows the goal of the user’s desirable lifestyle. In
our case studies, the goals are represented in ambient
information shown in the mirrors. In Mona Lisa
Bookshelf, beautiful Mona Lisa is a metaphor of a
well-organized bookshelf, and a sinking island is a
metaphor of the effect of global warming. The user
sometimes mistakes to make the meaning of an
expression in an aquarium, and this is one of the
serious problems to rely on metaphor. The user tends
to define the non intentional meaning in information
(Suri, 2005). For example, an ugly picture may be
used to discourage to keep the current undesirable
behavior, but the picture may encourage to keep the
current undesirable behavior for some avant-garde
people. This is highly depending on the cultures and
personalities of the users. It is not easy for a designer
to attach a single meaning to a specific expression
by all people. There are alternatives to represent
lifestyle goals in expression shown on a mirror more
directly. Some information may represent numbers
showing goals in an art form, or a portrait photo that
a user expects to become in the near future. We
believe that art thinking will help to design effective
persuasive ambient mirrors that offer more
stimulative experiences to consider the important of
desirable lifestyle.
The second meaning is the incentive to satisfy
human needs and desires that control the user’s
behavior. In our case studies, we have considered
following four incentives: physical incentive,
psychological incentive, social incentive, and
economical incentive. The physical incentive uses
physical comfort and discomfort to change the user’s
behavior. Our current case studies did not use the
physical incentive, but there are many opportunities
to use the incentive in smart spaces by embedding
several actuators in our surrounding spaces. The
psychological incentive evokes the user’s emotion to
change his/her behavior. Mona Lisa Bookshelf use
positive reinforcement and negative punishment to
engage the user’s emotion. Ugly Mona Lisa tends to
change the user’s current sloppy behavior. The social
incentive uses other persons’ eyes to change the
PECCS 2011 - International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communication Systems
160


user’s current undesirable behavior. Competition
with other people is a typical social incentive to
motivate the user. Also, sympathy with friends and
family members is a strong social incentive. In
EcoIsland, we use the incentive to motivate
activities that reduce CO2 emission. A family
member’s anxious look has a power to motivate to
change the user’s current undesirable behavior. The
economical incentive is to give rewards to the user
when changing his/her undesirable behavior. In
EcoIsland, users get virtual money to buy virtual
interiors to decorate their islands when their
activities to reduce CO2 emission are more than
expected.
There are many approaches to attach the
meanings to products and services (Krippendorff,
2005) (Schifferstein, 2007). Slow technologies are
effective technique to attach information to artful
expressions in an ambient way (Hallnas, 2001). The
emotional engagement evoked by persuasive
ambient mirrors develops some feeling to like or
dislike on the expressions on the mirrors. The
feeling is essential to make the effect of persuasive
expressions valid. This means that the user needs to
feel empathy on the expressions. In product design,
the user feels empathy when his/her belongings can
be personalized gradually like a pet’s growing. The
aspect is important to use products for a long time,
and it is effective for maintaining environmental
sustainability. In the near future, we may use various
daily smart objects to motivate to change the user’s
undesirable behavior. We believe that the
expressions showing some virtual creatures are more
acceptable to most of the people. Of course, each
person may love different creatures. Also, what the
user evokes empathy on is varied according to
cultural differences. In general, human evokes
empathy when a creature is growing by his care.
4.2 Feedback Control
A key issue to design persuasive ambient mirrors is
when and how feedback is returned to the user. In
our case studies, we have considered two types of
feedbacks. The first type is immediate feedback and
the second type is accumulated feedback. Immediate
feedback is returned immediately according to the
user’s current behavior, and the feedback
information visualizes his current behavior. For
immediate feedback, we adopt a basic technique in
operand conditioning to encourage or discourage the
user’s behavior using positive reinforcement and
negative punishment (Reeve, 2005). In most of our
case studies, the user's behavior is changed due to
positive reinforcement and negative punishment
caused by the expression reflecting the user's current
behavior. When Mona Lisa is getting old, the
negative emotion is increased and they feel anxious.
Emotional engagement is a very powerful tool to
change the user's undesirable behavior and to keep
desirable behavior (Fredrikson, 2003). The balance
between evoking positive and negative emotion is a
key to control the user’s behavior. If an expression
gives too much positive reinforcement, users feel
boring eventually, but too much negative
punishment are given, they feel helplessness, and the
effect will become ineffective eventually. The
adequate combination makes it possible to maintain
the effectiveness of persuasive ambient mirrors over
the long duration.
Even if the combination of positive
reinforcement and negative punishment is well
designed, only immediate feedback is inadequate to
motive the user over the long duration. The interval
of accumulated feedback is usually a few days or a
week. Sinking an island in EcoIsland is also
accumulated feedback to reflect family members’
lazy activities. We believe that it is more effective to
incorporate a long-term goal in accumulated
feedback. A long-term goal makes the user to aware
of the merit of a target desirable behavior, and to
develop intrinsic motivation to keep the desirable
behavior.
The feedback information needs to be changed
according to the stage in which the user is changing
his undesirable behavior. The transtheoretical model
proposes the five stages as a process involving the
progress to change the user’s undesirable behavior
(Zajonc, 1965). In earlier stages, the user prefers
positive reinforcement not to give up to change
his/her undesirable behavior. On the other hand, for
the user who is in the latter stage, weak negative
punishment is effective to remind that his/her current
behavior is not enough to achieve the short-term
goal. In our experiences with our case studies,
understanding the current stage of the user’s
behavior changing is necessary for designing a
successful persuasive ambient mirror.
4.3 Interaction Management
Virtual Aquarium uses a 3D accelerometer to
recognize the movement of the user's toothbrush to
observe his/her behavior without interacting
explicitly. Our experiences show that recognizing
the user’s behavior with sensors implicitly has the
limitation in reliability. In Mona Lisa Bookshelf, we
chose to analyze a very simple context that can be
DESIGNING PERSUASIVE AMBIENT MIRRORS TO MOTIVATE DESIRABLE LIFESTYLE
161


implemented in a reliable way. However, it is very
difficult to analyze the user's complex behavior
correctly even if using heavy-weighted learning-
based algorithms. Thus, EcoIsland uses a self-
reporting method to input what kind of actions the
user takes in order to avoid complex behavior
analysis. EcoIsland encourages users to input their
actions to reduce CO2 emission since they are
recognized as eco-conscious persons. A self-
reporting method requires the user to motivate to
input their activities explicitly. The user may use a
mobile phone and gesture to input his/her activities
with a minimum cognitive effort. Using incentive is
also effective to motivate self-reporting. For
example, EcoIsland uses social incentive and
economic incentive to encourage the self-reporting.
One of the problems in the current case studies is
that the user may cheat the analysis of the sensors
consciously. There are two approaches to solve this
problem. The first approach is to prohibit cheating
by increasing the accuracy of the movement
analysis. The second approach is to encourage the
user not to cheat to use sensors. From our
experiences, the user is encouraged to keep desirable
behavior if he/she deeply thinks about the merit
behind the desirable lifestyle. As described in the
previous subsection, incorporating a long-term goal
to develop intrinsic motivation is promising to solve
the problem.
5 FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Persuasive ambient mirrors are strongly effective to
encourage users to change their current undesirable
behavior. In our short-term case studies, the user
could enjoy to be encouraged to change his/her
behavior through persuasive expressions shown on
the mirrors. However, it is not easy to motivate
him/her to keep desirable behavior over the long
duration even if accumulated feedback is well
designed. If the user changes and customizes
persuasive visual information, feedback control and
interaction management are gradually changed
according to his/her changing preferences. He/she
can enjoy personalizing the interaction of persuasive
ambient mirrors. When the expression on a
persuasive ambient mirror is growing up like a pet,
the user feels empathy and feels the attachment to
the expression (Ruth, 2007). In our research group,
we are interested in making every daily artifact
intelligent. In (Kawsar, 2008), they reported to
develop a system to customize intelligent artifacts by
end-users. In the current Internet, many persons
eager to publish their photos, music, programs,
picture, and idea on the Internet, and any other
persons can enhance them cooperatively. This kind
of co-design or co-creation will be commonly
applied to daily artifacts in the near future to develop
more attractive daily artifacts. We are currently
developing a toolkit to develop smart artifacts to add
and personalize persuasive ambient mirrors by end-
users in a tangible way.
REFERENCES
S. E. Asch, "Opinions and Social Pressure". Scientific
American, pp. 31-35. 1955
B. L. Fredrikson, ``The Value of Positive Emotions: The
Emerging Science of Positive Psychology is Coming
to Understand Why It's Good to Feel Good'', American
Scientist, Vol.91, 2003.
K. Fujinami, F. Kawsar, T. Nakajima; "AwareMirror: A
Personalized Display using a Mirror"; Proceedings of
The 3rd International Conference on Pervasive
Computing, 2005.
L. Hallnas, J. Redstrom, “Slow Technology - Designing
for Reflection'', Personal and Ubiqutious Computing,
Vol.5, No.3, Springer, 2001.
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science,
162:1243--1248, 1968.
IPCC, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change
2007, http://www.ipcc.ch/
N. Jafarinaimi, et al, “Breakway: An Ambient Display
Designed to Change Human Behavior”, In ACM
CHI’05, 2005.
F. Kawsar, K. Fujinami, and T. Nakajima; "Deploy
Spontaneously: Supporting End-Users in Building and
Enhancing a Smart Home" In Proceedings of
Ubicomp’08, 2008
K. Krippendorff, "The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation
for Design", CRC Press, 2005.
J. J. Lin, et al. “Fish‘n’Steps: Encouraging Physical
Activity with an Interactive Computer Game,”
Proceedings of UbiComp ’06, 2006.
Johnmarshall Reeve, "Understanding Motivation and
Emotion", Fourth Edition, Wiley, 2005.
M. Ruth, Jan P. L. Schoormans, and Hendrik N. J.
Schifferstein, "Product Attachment: Design Strategies
to Stimulate the Emotional Bonding with Products," in
Product Experience, Elsevier, 2007.
Hendrik N. J. Schifferstein, Paul Hekkert, Product
Experience, Elsevier Science, 2007.
S. Consolvo, et. al., “Activity Sensing in the Wild: A Field
Trial of UbiFit Garden”, In ACM CHI’08, 2008.
J. F. Suri, “Thoughtless Acts?”, Chronicle Books, 2005.
T. Toscos, et. al., “Chick Clique: Persuasive Technology to
Motivate Teenage Girls to Exercise,” In ACM CHI’08
WIP, 2008.
Zajonc, R. B. Social facilitation, Science, pp.149, 269-
274. 1965.
PECCS 2011 - International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communication Systems
162