Persuasive technologies surround us, and theyre growing smarter. How do these technologies work? And why?

GSN Games, which designs mobile games like poker and bingo, collects billions of signals every day from the phones and tablets its players are usingrevealing everything from the time of day they play to the types of game they prefer to how they deal with failure. If two people were to download a game onto the same type of phone simultaneously, in as little as five minutes their games would begin to divergeeach one automatically tailored to its users style of play.

Yet GSN does not simply track customers preferences and customize its services accordingly, as many digital businesses do. In an effort to induce players to play longer and try more games, it uses the data it pulls from phones to watch for signs that they are tiring. Largely by measuring how frequently, how fervently, and how quickly you press on the screen, the company can predict with a high degree of accuracy just when you are likely to lose interestgiving it the chance to suggest other games long before that happens.

The games are free, but GSN shows ads and sells virtual items that are useful to players, so the longer the company can persuade someone to play, the more money it can make. Its quickly growing revenue and earnings are a testament to how well this strategy works, says Portman Wills, GSNs chief information officer. Along with factors such as smart engineering and creative design, using data to shape persuasive tactics is a key to the companys success.

The idea that computers, mobile phones, websites, and other technologies could be designed to influence peoples behavior and even attitudes dates back to the early 1990s, when Stanford professor B.J. Foggcoined the term persuasive computing (later broadened to persuasive technology). But today many companies have taken that one step further: using technologies that measure customer behavior to design products that are not just persuasive but specifically aimed at forging new habits.

If habit formation as a business model was once largely limited to casinos and cigarette manufacturers, today technology has opened up the option to a broad range of companies. Insights from psychology and behavioral economics about how and why people make certain choices, combined with digital technologies, social media, and smartphones, have enabled designers of websites, apps, and a wide variety of other products to create sophisticated persuasive technologies.

How these technologies work and why are the big questions this Business Report will answer.

With new digital tools, companies that might once have been simply hardware makers (such as Jawbone) or service providers (Expedia) are now taking on the role of influencer, attempting to shape the habits of their users by exploiting the psychological underpinnings of how people make choices.

While Expedia is trying to design its website so as to trigger someone to visit daily, Jawbone has built features into its fitness bands and other products that executive Kelvin Kwong grandly describes as using our best understanding of how the brain works to get you to act. And Kwong says its working. Sending carefully designed messages to people wearing Jawbone fitness trackers has helped them get an additional 23 minutes of sleep per night on average, and move 27 percent more, the company says.

Habit Design, which bills itself as the leading habit training program, employs game designers and people with PhDs in behavioral science. It says it has created a platform that keeps 80 percent of participants in corporate wellness programs involved over three months. Traditional programs like seminars or counseling, by contrast, generally lose 80 percent of participants in the first 10 days, according to Michael Kim, a former Microsoft executive who is now Habit Designs CEO.

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Technology and Persuasion