Using Interaction as Nudge to Increase Installation Rateof COVID-19 Contact-Confirming Application
Yuji Kanamitsu

Nara Institute of Science andTechnologyIkoma, Japan

Yuki Matsuda

yukimat@is.naist.jp
Nara Institute of Science andTechnology
Ikoma, Japan

Koki Tachibana

Yugo Nakamura

Nara Institute of Science andTechnology
Ikoma, Japany-nakamura@ait.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Kyushu University
Fukuoka, Japan

Hirohiko Suwa

Keiichi Yasumotoh-suwa@is.naist.jp
Nara Institute of Science andTechnology/RIKEN
Ikoma, Japan

yasumoto@is.naist.jp
Nara Institute of Science andTechnology
Ikoma, Japan

ABSTRACT

31Advertising

2BLE

Recognizing

Scanning
Raspberry PiM5

For the COVID-19 Contact Confirming Application (COCOA) to
be fully effective, it is important that many people install COCOAon their smartphones. However, because the current COCOA implements only a minimum number of functions, it is difficult tomotivate people to install it. Therefore, we focus on an extrinsic
approach that motivates the installation of COCOA by adding fun
functions through interaction with a ubiquitous system on the environment side. In this paper, we introduce an interactive system thatnudges users to install COCOA by reframing the act of installing
COCOA as getting a ticket to participate in fun experiences.

M5StickC

if serviceUUID==0xFD6F:COCOA installed!
else:
No install

Smartphone

SENSINGCCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Interaction design.
REFRAMINGKEYWORDS
Nudge; Gamification; COVID-19 Contact-Confirming Application
ACM Reference Format:
Yuji Kanamitsu, Koki Tachibana, Yugo Nakamura, Yuki Matsuda, HirohikoSuwa, and Keiichi Yasumoto. 2021. Using Interaction as Nudge to Increase
Installation Rate of COVID-19 Contact-Confirming Application. In AdjunctProceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasiveand Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International
Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct), September
21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.
org/10.1145/3460418.3479284

FEEDBACK
WHICH?

A

FORTUNE SLIP

1GETINSTALL

B

VOTE

PAINTING

INTRODUCTION

Contact tracing has become an important measure that can beused to minimize exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic [3].
Against this background, Google and Apple have jointly developed
a contact notification system [2]. In Japan, the COVID-19 ContactConfirming Application (COCOA) was released by the Ministry ofPermission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8461-2/21/09.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479284

Figure 1: System Overview

Health, Labor and Welfare [4]. COCOA enables users to receive
notifications about possible contact with positive COVID-19 cases
by using Bluetooth communication. For COCOA to be fully effective, it must be installed by a large number of people. However,the current penetration rate of COCOA is insufficient for effectiveness. Unfortunately, COCOA has only minimal functionality, andit is presumably difficult to motivate users to install COCOA. InJapan, it is not possible to force people to install any particular

UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USAapplication. Because self-motivated installation is essential, we focus on technology-mediated nudge mechanisms [1]. Previously,
we proposed a nudge using interactive systems with sensing andambient feedback [5, 6]. In this paper, we focus on the question:
how do we motivate people to install apps? We propose an interactive system that nudges users to install COCOA by reframing theact of installing COCOA as getting a ticket to participate in a funexperience. The key idea is to provide the motivation for installing
COCOA by making it an enjoyable experience, through interaction
with ubiquitous systems deployed in the daily environment side.

2

Examples of Personal Interaction (Digital Fortune Slip)

When you install theCOCOA App・・・

SYSTEM DESIGN

The proposed system consists of a sensing component that identifies
the user’s COCOA installation status, and a feedback component
that provides a fun experience, as shown in Figure 1.
In the sensing component for recognizing the installation status,
we use a M5StickC IoT board to sense the Bluetooth low-energy(BLE) signals emitted from the user’s smartphone. The data broadcast from COCOA contains a 16-bit service universally unique
identifier (UUID) (0xFD6F) specific to COCOA. Therefore, by checking whether a COCOA-specific service UUID is in the received
broadcast, it is possible to detect the existence of a smartphonewith COCOA installed. The sensed BLE signals are stored in a Rasberry Pi. The feedback component decides whether to initiate anevent based on the recognition result for the sensing component.
When a user approaches the system, the installation status of
the user’s smartphone is recognized by the sensing component. In
this system, only users who have installed COCOA can participate
in the event. We aim to encourage the installation of COCOA bytriggering the desire to participate in the interaction. The systemprovides two types of interaction: personal interaction and ambientinteraction, as shown in figure 2.
An example of personal interaction is the digital fortune slipexperience. When a COCOA installation is detected by the system
as a user approaches the system, a fortune drawing will be performed as an animation on a screen connected to the system. A
different example of ambient interaction is digital interactive art.
Here, the system scans the smart phones with COCOA in the area
and changes the representation of the art according to the numberof COCOA installations. For example, as the installation rate in anarea increases, the picture will become more beautiful.

3Y.Kanamitsu, et al.

CONCLUSION

We proposed an interactive system to extrinsically motivate people
to install COCOA by treating the COCOA application as a ticket
to a fun experience. In the future, the system will be installed in
actual environments, such as cafes and restaurants, on a long-termbasis to evaluate its effectiveness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by an ACT-I grant from the Japan Scienceand Technology Agency (JPMJPR18UK).

Personal

Public zone

Examples of Ambient Interaction (Digital Art Interaction)

Figure 2: Example of interaction using COCOA

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