Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Social media will revolutionize how business, politics, and education work. It has the potential to influence people's behaviour to do good things for themselves and for their communities. To unlock this potential, one needs to answer profound research questions about human motivation and solve the technological challenges in building infrastructures that support successful communities. This research aims to develop an infrastructure that motivates people to pursue and accomplish goals that benefit them and their communities. The research will focus on developing: - a user-modeling and personalization infrastructure that allows to share user data among internet applications, social networks and apps on mobile phones. This will ensure the capability of personalizing the motivational interventions and incentive mechanisms to the needs, goals, context and social relationships of the user. - a persuasive and incentive mechanism that encourages learners to explore the vast resources on the internet through self-directed learning. - a set of persuasive applications that motivate people to eat healthier, exercise, be more connected (for elderly people), as well as social incentive applications to encourage youth involvement in volunteer groups and charities. As a result, software systems will be developed motivating people to learn, live a healthy lifestyle, act to the benefit of community.