Interactive Environment-Mediated Nudging: Prompting Desired Behavior Using the Virtual Representation of Sound Embedded in a Real Living Environment

Abstract

People can often be observed violating public manner in public spaces. In these cases, posters or vocal announcements do not seem to be effective warnings. To solve this problem, we propose creating digital sound stimuli which nudge people to stop the unmannered activity. This research intends to design such stimuli by molding digital technique-mediated nudging to affect people psychologically, unlike a simple notification. In this research, we call such a designed stimulus a “nudge”. This study highlights the design of this mechanism, embedded in a real living environment, from the perspective of interaction. We aim to create a new type of interaction between digital functions and people which does not require intentional interaction. We built a system that can intuitively nudge a person to perform a specific task in response to their environmental changes. We created a virtual representation which incorporates the natural phenomenon of mimicking sound usage in a specific situation. The sound patterns were generated using multi-channel speakers to create directional 3D audio effects. We examined whether our approach could nudge a person who was not attending to his surroundings, through the social distance scenario. The results demonstrated the potential of the proposed system, which can induces a person’s instinctive action desired in a specific situation. This designed stimulus can act as a nudge and would alter a person’s behavior, such that they unintentionally adjust oneself in social distancing. We also addressed system design flaws. The findings of this study may be useful to scholars and practitioners who want to examine or design nudging stimulus for human living environments.