Exploring and Elevating Healthy Behaviors with Social Technologies

AAHB Conference, March 2015

Derek L. HansenAbell Professor of Innovation

School of Technology, BYUdlhansen@byu.edu

@shakmatt

Technology-mediated social participation (TMSP)

“The goal is to create new architectures for the online public spaces that energize the population to contribute to vital community and national priorities” - IEEE Computer, Nov. 2010

Part I: Exploring Health Behaviors

What can we learn about health behavior now thatwould not have been possible before?

From Milgram to Facebook

Data Sources Direct Streams

Free Solutions So

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APIs

Scrapers

Software Libraries

Aggregated Data

Paid Solutions

Problems with Social Media Data

Need for Data Scientists

Research Methods & Skills

• Social Network Analysis• Data Visualization• Data Mining• Machine Learning (e.g., classification)• Natural Language Processing (e.g., sentiment

analysis)• Predictive Statistics (e.g., regression)• Online Experiments

Adderall Abuse by College Students

Combine data sources & look for patterns

Predicting Personality via FacebookPredict, don’t just describe

Predicting personalityfrom Facebook data

Predicting depressionfrom Twitter data

Look for structure, not just content

Stigmatized Illness & Social MediaMix in different data as controls

Historical note: how methodology impacts findings

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Focus on Content Focus on Search Process, Usability, & Success

Part II: Elevating Healthy Behaviors

What can we design to promote healthy behavior now That would not have been possible before?

Lessig’s Pathetic Dot

Socio-Technical Systems

Cognitive-Technical System Social-Technical System

How a Cockpit Remembers its SpeedHutchins, Edwin

Veiled Viral MarketingLeverage unique possibilities, don’t replicate the real world

Community Wiki RepositoriesLook outside of health domain for inspiration

NodeXL SNA ToolDevelop new analysis tools & methods, not just interventions

Mobile, Social Games

Wed social science constructs with emergent phenomena

Relevant Technology Trends

• Merging of online and offline– Internet of things, wearables, augmented reality,

context-aware devices, beacons

• Gaming– Mobile games, social games, virtual reality

• Data mining and analysis across channels• Other– Mobile Payments, crowdfunding, tools for casual

programmers

Questions & Discussion

Derek L. HansenAbell Professor of Innovation

School of Technology, BYUdlhansen@byu.edu

@shakmatt