I split my time between Stanford University and industry innovation.
At my Stanford lab, the Persuasive Technology Lab, we're focused on mobile persuasion, the psychology of Facebook, and peace innovation.
In industry I'm helping organizations better understand captology, designing for simplicity, and persuasion in social networks like Facebook. It's a great time to be a psychologist who investigates how people use technology--so many fun things to do!
If you're interested in captology, check out my book: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. But that's not all. Last year we launched a new book: Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change. Summary: Mobile phones will become the #1 platform for persuasion. The book explains why.
I'm deep into investigating the psychology of Facebook. In Fall 2007 I taught a new Facebook course with Dave McClure. During the 10-week quarter, our students' projects persuaded more than 16 million people to install the apps they created. The secret? Psychology and metrics (and some really amazing students, of course). I recently taught another new course on what makes Facebook so persuasive. From that course we’re creating a new book: The Psychology of Facebook. My investigations into Facebook build on my lab’s previous research into how Web 2.0 companies motivate and persuade people.
I’m also co-editing a book on health technology, with Richard Adler. We’re bringing together short chapters from experts on how to use SMS for improving health behavior. This book builds on a conference my lab created called “Texting4Health”
Perhaps the most important work I'm doing these days is Peace Innovation. We’re not quite ready to announce or share much about this effort. But here’s a summary: The vision is to innovate persuasive technologies that can bring about world peace in 30 years. This is an ambitious vision, but I believe it is entirely possible. We finally have the tools and insights to start making world peace a reality. (By the way, we’ve found this efforts gets mixed reactions. Promoting peace is somehow seen as uncool and terribly naive. But we’ll persist.)
My lab team and I keep a blog: Captology Notebook.
The other pages here explain more about my work. You’ll also get insight into my work by viewing this list of resources I’ve created.
BJ Fogg
