Tuesday, March 11, 2026: Monthly Program (BayCHI) On March 11, the BayCHI community was welcomed to a "fireside" discussion of captology with Dr. B.J. Fogg and some of his colleagues from the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University. Dr. Fogg introduced captology, demonstrated his technique of influence analysis, and brought in his colleagues to help apply principles from captology to HCI practice. The idea underlying "captology" is that computers can be persuasive and can be designed to change people's attitudes and behaviors. It can be applied to a variety of fields, including health, education, safety, the environment, personal relationships, consumerism, and community involvement. The term "captology" refers to the overlap of computers and the psychology of persuasion. According to Dr. Fogg, captology is the direction in which interactive technology is going. In the past, computer scientists were concerned first with making the computer functional and then usable. Now that many foundational issues in functionality and usability have been addressed, the next step is to make the computer persuasive. There are two main categories of persuasion in captology. The first, "macrosuasion," describes products whose entire purpose is to persuade. The second category is "microsuasion," which refers to elements of influence within products that are intended to persuade. Microsuasion is more commonly practiced. Computers have features that make them especially suitable for persuading people. Compared to other media such as print, radio, and TV, computers are interactive. Compared to human persuaders, such as coaches, computers are more persistent, able to use different modes of persuasion, and can be scaled more easily if a technique has been found to be effective. Dr. Fogg introduced his functional triad, which neatly organizes the theoretically underpinning of captology. There are there ways in which people view or respond to computers.