Cellphone 150 – toothbrush 2

Changing habits is as easy as brushing your teeth

The opening keynote of mLearnCon by BJ Fogg was from an unexpected point of view – psychology and behavioral change. Fogg provided us three winning recipes which he exemplified mostly with the social media.

1. Put hot triggers into the service. As an example Fogg gave Facebook and the way joining and liking requires activity and selection from user while they open up some new interesting realms to him or her.
2. Trigger the right sequence with a path of baby-steps. They are small triggers that must be designed to form the successful sequence. For example GroupOn.com makes you click first to see something more, then order a free sample, then download a proper app for it, and after that it feels natural to let the app get to know more of your behavioral procedures.
3. Build from habits to habits+. Use the tiny successes snowball effect. Tie the change into good anchors, to old habits & situations. Self-celebrating tiny successes is a key factor. So: If you want do do more push-ups, use some anchor, preferably in you morning routines. After brushing your teeth or after peeing, like he said, do it every time. (The mens’ bathroom might be an odd scene if every participant decided to make the change.)

There are more cellphones in the world than toothbrushes or pants

Judy Brown gave an overview of mobile learning. With the help of some statistical graphs she let us learn eg:

“there are more cellphones in the world than toothbrushes or pants” (and in the US, a mobile device is grabbed 150x a day, which seems to hold water also with my behavioral pattern)

“there are more mobile subscriptions in the world than access to electricity or pure drinking water”.

Brown presented trends, some strong already and some just igniting:

• iPads are coming fast (eg. over 400 th. USD savings per reduced 25 pounds per year for an airline company for delivering onboard schedules and manuals in iPad format)
• Gamification
• Location-based learning (from distance to proximity learning)
• Augmented reality and data goggles are just aroung the corner

Well planned is half done, and well done is… naturally, a success

University of Central Florida has produced a mobile app as a front end for their online courses and other studying activities like campus news&events, maps, library, Facebook&Twitter link etc.

I was impressed by the clear strategy and execution of it, how they had planned, tested, piloted and released the app. If you are a project manager or if you are involved in a similar project, check their slides (will be available here, see session 402).