Abstract
In the digital world, persuasive technologies are of great importance because through the fusion of technology and psychology they can influence the choice of a particular product, brand, or alter the behavior of users.
It is an interdisciplinary research field that focuses on the design and development of interactive technologies that are able to create, maintain or change human thinking and behavior using persuasive techniques. Thus, although some companies can use them as marketing techniques, they are still an incipient scientific area that faces multiple challenges, such as: the acceptance and real use of the technology by the user; the adaptation and personalization of the system to the user; the perceived usefulness and user satisfaction; the detection of events at the right time; the continuity of the new behavior over time; and ethical issues.
In this context, the group is working on the development of persuasion technologies from different perspectives:
- Their application in recommendation systems and decision support.
- Its application in virtual societies of humans and agents, where the agents act as virtual assistants for the humans, monitoring the user and providing a proactive, personalized and justified decision support system.
- Its use in social networks.
- Its ability to persuade users, provoking changes in their thinking and behavior by means of argumentation techniques.