Worksheets
Choice and Decision Making for Health
and Well-Being Researchers
Course
at the University of Graz
30-31 January, 2012
Sponsored by EIT-ITC Labs,
Action Line “Health and Well-Being”
Anthony Jameson
(with support from Silvia Gabrielli)
Suggested use
When you encounter in your design work related to health and well-being
technology a situation in which users are confronted with an interesting
preferential choice or decision:
1. Make a fresh copy of these worksheets.
2. On the first sheet, describe the choice situation.
3. On each subsequent sheet, consider the questions listed there with regard
to the selected choice situation.
4. Where a question raises interesting issues with regard to your choice
situation, insert your answers.
2
Example of Preferential Choice
Describe an example of preferential choice that arises in your design work related
to health and well-being solutions. (Look for one where it seems worthwhile for a
designer to try to support or influence the choice.)
[Insert your answer, which will appear in this font.]
3
What Is a Good Decision?
For a given choice in your work:
What goals and values might determine for the user what constitutes a “good
decision”?
How could you support a focus on appropriate goals and values?
How much time and effort is a user likely to be willing to invest in making the
choice?
What unpleasant thoughts and obstacles could arise (difficult tradeoffs;
emotionally charged consequences)?
How important is it likely to be for the user to be able to justify the choice that
he/she makes – to him/herself or to other persons?
4
Temporal Aspects of Choice
What immediate consequences of choosing an option may the chooser consider?
(Examples: the experience of performing the action in question; an immediate
change in the system’s appearance or behavior; an immediate emotional
reaction.)
What delayed consequences may the chooser consider? (Examples: something
like the “immediate consequences” in the previous question, but later in time; a
response by other persons; an increase in the user’s efficiency in using the
system; a progress in the healthcare treatment adopted as reported by historical
data graphs.)
If there are delayed consequences:
Is the delay long enough for time discounting to become important?
Does it make sense for the designer to try to reduce the delay? If so, how?
Might the choice lead to a preference reversal between a “smaller-sooner” and a
“larger-later” benefit?
If so, does it make sense to provide some sort of commitment mechanism? If so,
how might it look?
If the issue of broad vs. narrow choice bracketing arises
How would broad bracketing look in this situation concretely?
What might be the benefits (if any) of broad bracketing?
What factors that already exist in the situation could encourage or discourage
broad bracketing?
What design measures could you take to encourage or discourage broad
bracketing?
5
Roles of Affect
Feelings
In your situation, is it likely that the patient will have learned positive or negative
affective responses (feelings) to one or more of the available options? If so, what
might these responses be like, and how might the patient have learned them?
In particular, would these responses be likely to be acquired through naturally
occurring experience with the options, through artificially induced affect (e.g.,
through advertising), or in some other way?
Mood
In the situation in which the patient needs to make a decision, is there a reason to
think that the patient may be systematically in a good or bad mood?
If so, what might be the consequences?
Are there ways of influencing the mood?
Evaluability
When the patient in your situation is considering options, is it possible that some
of the available information will have a low evaluability? Why (or why not)?
If so: Can you think of a way of increasing the evaluability?
6
Doing What You Have Done in the Past
Recognition-primed decision making
To what extent does your choice situation share the typical characteristics of
naturalistic decision making?
Is some form of recognition-primed decision making likely to occur?
Should recognition-primed decision be supported? If so, how?
Habits
Might some users make the choice on the basis of habit?
If so, does it make sense for the designer to try overcome habitual choosing
here?
If not, could it make sense to try to encourage the formation of relevant habits?
Skill acquisition
Does it seem likely that the acquisition of skill in executing one of the options will
make that option attractive for subsequent choices?
Would you want to support or counteract this tendency? How?
7
Social Influence
Social examples
In your choice situation, are relevant social examples available?
If so:
How could they influence the user’s choice (social examples as information;
desire to identify with group; practical benefits of conformity; expectations of
persons with authority in the field, like healthcare professionals)?
Might social examples be misleading in this situation (as with pluralistic
ignorance)?
How could the designer encourage appropriate use of the social examples?
Norms and expectations
Are there norms and expectations that could influence the user’s choice?
If so:
What persons have them (e.g., the doctor or caretaker; family; members of a
health discussion forum)?
How could they influence the user’s choice (reward or punishment;
acknowledgement of legitimacy)?
How could a designer support appropriate responses by the user to the norms
and expectations?
8
Learning From Experience
What sorts of things can the user learn from experience in making the choice?
Examples:
 what options are available
 what their objective consequences are
 how these consequences are experienced subjectively
 what goals and values are relevant in this situation
What obstacles to learning can arise here?
Examples:
 results of choices hard to observe
 number of results too small
 broad bracketing involved
 tendency to exploit rather than explore
9