Application of Crowdsourcing to the Design of Behavior Change Technologies

Behavior change technologies are ubiquitous. The design of behavior change technologies requires familiarity of users and exploration of proper technologies, supported by the vast information and ideas collected through crowdsourcing. This article thus applies crowdsourcing to the design of behavior change technologies. A three-week design project was conducted, whereby designers’ use of the information and ideas collected was recorded. Results validated the support of crowdsourcing, and revealed the features of crowdsourcing and traditional design methods. Designers selected higher- quality information from crowdsourcing than from traditional methods. Crowdsourcing and traditional methods collected different behavior changes, and induced different developments of behavior change technologies. Some suggestions on the application of crowdsourcing are also provided.