Utilizing a digital game as a mediatory artifact for social persuasion to prevent speeding

Abstract

In this paper we present a game-based approach to stop a driver from speeding by means of social persuasion. The approach utilizes a digital game played by a passenger inside the car. The game serves as a mediatory artifact, which translates the speed of the car into in-game events, thus, nudging the passenger to communicate with the driver about his/her driving behavior. As a game we used Tetris, which was coupled to the speed of a virtual vehicle in our driving simulator. We designed four different in-game representations of the real car data and examined, which of these designs is most suitable to trigger an intuitive, understandable linkage between the speeding behavior and the corresponding in-game events in order to enable a prompt intervention of the passenger. We evaluated the four designs in an exploratory user study. Our findings highlight the feasibility of our approach, as even passengers, who were rather uninvolved in the driving task, were successfully encouraged to slow down the driver. Based on our study results, we recommend a hybrid design strategy for the game, between designing for a dynamically increasing in-game challenge to foster passenger engagement based on fun, and simultaneously intervening dynamically in the playability of the game to foster communication with the driver to pave the way for social persuasion in the car.