Transforming City Technology - TransCityTech

Majority of global problems are byproducts of poor human attitude and behavior. People, communities, societies, businesses, organizations, industries, basically everyone needs help with transformations. People tend to perceive changes as something difficult, impossible, and mystical, thus are willing to avoid them. Such attitude leads to poorer decisions and consequent behavioral outcomes.

We propose TransCityTech solution containing:

• Transforming Wellbeing Theory - explaining the inevitable need for global transformations,
• Typology of Change - clarifying the variety of changes,
• Transforming Technology Framework - containing 8 applicable tools for immediate use, and
• Transforming Sociotech Design - blending technology with human nature to empower sustainable changes at scale.

Due to its scientific richness and practical nature, our solution is easy to scale and apply in many essential life contexts globally, including health, wellbeing, innovation, education, diversity, culture, sustainability, equality, social change, governance, safety, ecology, and the United Nations global goals for sustainable development.

More: transforms.me

Many people want to change, but we know that 80% of new year's resolutions end in February. Why? Because people tend to perceive changes as something difficult, impossible, and mystical, thus are willing to avoid them. Such attitude naturally leads to poorer decisions and consequent behavioral outcomes.

Global Wellness Institute reveals that wellbeing industry grows fast exceeding $3.7 trillion market. The fastest growing are: Public Health (+23.5%), Fitness & Mind-Body (+21.4%), and Healthy Nutrition & Weight Loss (+12.8%). WHO reports that of 56.9 million global deaths, 40.5 million, or 71%, are due to NCDs. 

TransCityTech addresses the aforementioned contexts, as it provides technology and tools for the development of sustainable technological solutions to incite behavior change instead of short term or superficial symptom reduction. Way too many innovations fight the symptoms of a deeper behavioural problem. For example, health technologies that focus on reducing obesity by giving people the means to lose weight, or programs that are treating mental health & wellbeing at an individual level.

Therefore, we help community leaders and technology developers to reshape urban behaviors in countless ways. It provides models to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics (Stibe & Larson 2016).

Over the decades, advanced technologies have been emerging to make our lives better and businesses grow. The fundamental question still remains - are we gaining decent success in achieving healthier societies? Unfortunately, many lives are continuously getting unbalanced despite us making progress in building increasingly capable technological innovations.

Therefore, we have been working with urban dwellers (e.g. Greater Boston, Vienna, Riga) and companies (e.g. Higi, Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing, Cardiolyse, Beacinsight) to help addressing their issues by designing, building, and retrofitting city technologies that would improve health. Especially, investigating their needs in the areas of urban mobility, physical health, nutrition, education, recycling, and city UX.

We know that for a solution to be truly effective, it should cause a paradigm shift in society and individual attitude. Our solution provides programs working on solutions to reduce NDC's with the tools to pinpoint the root problem. And most importantly, the TransCityTech facilitates durable, sustainable technological innovation, which impact outlasts the period of its implementation. 

TransCityTech employs state-of-the-art scientific insights and practical applications to transform lives and organizations at global scale. Highly instrumental for organizations and communities that are undergoing transformations, as it provides easy to use solutions for achieving permanent behavior change.

TransCityTech solution is an inevitable response to the ever-growing imbalance in our lives across the globe. Present knowledge on transforming innovations often reveals how behavior change designs and interventions are limited in sustaining their effects. There is an increasing need for novel ways to create technology that helps communities not only to achieve their goals, but also to support sustaining their newly developed habits. 

Our solution empowers people and organizations to succeed in their desired and often even inevitable changes. TransCityTech extends the understanding beyond limitations of traditional change management and mainstream urban designs.

To help communities create urban designs for sustainable change and societal wellbeing, we propose a science-driven Transforming Technology Framework - TransTechFrame.

TransTechFrame embodies 8 (eight) practical tools:

• TRIANGLE – triadic reciprocal determinism (Bandura 1986),
• CURVE – elaboration likelihood (Petty & Cacioppo 1986) and behavioral (Fogg 2003) modeling,
• METRIC – essential components for defining transformation (Stibe & Larson 2016),
• CIRCLES – susceptibility to influence and change (Stibe & Larson 2016),
• ARCHITECTURE – key layers of transforming technology design (Stibe & Larson 2016),
• SOCIUM – fundamentals of socially influencing systems (Stibe 2015a),
• MODERATION – typology of computer-supported influence (Stibe 2015b), and
• ETHICS – dark patterns and persuasive backfiring (Stibe & Cugelman 2016).

TransTechFrame provides a solution to focus on the underlying cause of a problem, e.g. changing the root and preventing disease, instead of stimulating people to fight the symptoms. It has been known that preventing the cause of NCD's or fighting the root problem is more cost-effective than medical intervention. Concrete example: losing weight or reducing salt intake has a more significant and longer lasting effect on lowering blood pressure than a combination of drugs. 

TransTechFrame is highly instrumental for researchers and practitioners designing influential technologies, as it helps internalize and apply science-driven tools for achieving sustainable and permanent behavior change. Communities and organizations can now use our solution to substantially improve their performance.

Our solution has been already applied in many contexts, including Biking Tourney in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. A socially influencing technology was implemented to provoke competition between and cooperation within organizations. Participating organizations were ranked under four different categories related to their performance related to bicycling. The categories were designed to encourage employees to ride bicycles instead of choosing high-energy means of transportation for their daily commutes. Our solution engaged 239 employees from 14 companies that together rode 30K miles in 6 weeks.

Contrary to the old fashioned and limited motivators, such as positive (carrots) and negative (sticks) incentives, TransCityTech addresses social change in a new - sustainable way - which empowers real transformations. Our solution reveals three general types of change: transactional, transitional, and transformational.

Transactional change is usually defined as an occurrence producing an outcome that differs from previous preferences. Then, transitional change is often defined as a period, in which certain outcomes significantly differ from what was habitual before. However, transformational change manifests itself as a continuum having direction as well as magnitude to produce apparently irreversible shifts.

The three types of change have their characteristics:

Sustaining the change has always been the hardest challenge. Thanks to our TransCityTech solution, practitioners and community leaders are now equipped with state-of-the-art tools for designing long-lasting transformative technology, innovations, spaces, cities, and experiences.

Our technology will also enable people to access TransTechFrame, thus allowing communities to address their chronic challenges in a novel way, so accelerating their transformations around the world.

TransCityTech solution has been already successfully applied to many problem contexts, including these 2 implementations:

1) Biking Tourney in Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts

Promoting bicycling is important to foster sustainable and healthy modes of transport in urban areas. For this reason, we created an online technology platform that engages commuters to prefer biking to work instead of using less eco-friendly mobility modes.

Our Biking Tourney engaged 239 employees from 14 companies, who together rode 30 000 miles in six weeks. The results revealed a variety of positive effects from our TransCityTech solution.

The image below presents a graphical interface of our web-based solution that was accessible through mobile devices and computers of the participants and also the public displays in the organizations.

Below are the results from the PLS-SEM model that show how our technology increased participant engagement (26%) mainly through competition (58%) and cooperation (58%).

2) Higi Health Stations Across the USA

Higi (higi.com) is a north American medical technology company that engages consumers and their data in real-time with their trusted healthcare organizations to improve satisfaction, increase quality, and reduce cost. As a large portion of activity at the Higi health stations happened anonymously, the challenge for Higi was to convert the anonymous users into account holders. 

We leveraged TransTechFrame in the process of designing additional interfaces for Higi stations (below).

The results revealed an overall click rate increase of 19.50% for the stations with the messages and even higher increase of 31.60% for the weight related messages (below).

Participants relapse after weight loss programs or new technology as soon as they lose interest or the program ends. One example: after a gastric bypass surgery, up to 50 % of patients regain some amount of weight. And this surgery may have severe complications. This is a perfect example of symptom relief which dissipates (partially) after the intervention. 

Our society needs the tools, such as TransCityTech, to construct innovation that fights the cause of NCDs. Not the symptoms. We can continue to keep building solutions that address symptoms, or we can take a step back and redefine the way we come up with innovative health technologies. When compared to the medical world. Instead of giving blood lowering drugs, we could focus on removing salt from our diets, lower the BMI of the population, stimulate healthy behaviour. This has also been proven far more effective in terms of points of lower blood pressure. Lower the blood pressure with a drug and the symptoms are gone, but the disease is still very much there.

Our TransCityTech solution empowers community designers to advance technologies that make behavioral and attitudinal changes last. Moreover, it also draws knowledge from:

• behavioral economics, 
• gamification, 
• nudging,
• persuasive technology,
• psychology,
• neuroscience, and
• social influence 

that can lead to attitudinal transformations. 

TransCityTech enable community leaders to design technology that facilitates desired transformative effects. Our solution expands the potential of technologies in attaining long-term permanent behavioral changes at all scales, be it at individual, group, or societal levels.

Besides our major implementations of the Biking Tourney (1K+ people) and Higi (10K+ people), our solution has engaged already 50K+ people from 5 continents and long list of countries, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, and the most of European countries.

50+ Keynotes and Talks Globally - transforms.me

TEDxAUP 2019 (online end-July)

Demystifying Human Change: Transformation Made Easy for Everyone

This talk revolutionizes our understanding about human behavior change by demystifying transformation and introducing its key ingredients: Transforming Wellbeing Theory, Typology of Change, Transforming Technology Framework, and Transforming Sociotech Design.

TEDxRiga 2017 - (3.7K+ views)

Transcending Instincts: Crowdsourced Data Can Fix Your Motivation

We often don't have problems with defining our goals, but we have problems with getting there. Agnis shows us how socially influencing systems can help in transforming our lives. Improving our health and wellbeing, preferring eco-friendly choices will be so much easier once we become aware of others succeeding on their way to the same goals.

TEDxBeaconStreet 2015 - (3.2K+ views)

Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing

How healthy are your habits? How healthy are the habits of those around you? Dr. Agnis Stibe is redesigning cities to help the inhabitants follow healthier, more sustainable habits. In this fascinating video, he explains how people are motivated by those around them, and by their environment.

Scaling is quite simple, so 100K+ people in 1 year and 10M+ people in 5 years (impacting 1B+ people).

More: 

https://www.youtube.com/channe...

Our strategy is to consolidate previously developed technology, research, and practical implementations to provide easy to use digital tools for transformation - a handy online platform, mobile application, and urban technology design - for people to learn and utilize TransCityTech and TransTechFrame. People want positive transformations in their lives, communities, and organizations. This technology will empower people by demystifying transformation, making it accessible for everyone and easy applicable to their essential life contexts.

1 Year Goal

Besides the website (transforms.me) and already developed tools, the next step requires standardising the instruments and technology, as well as making them available online and through a mobile application. That also includes online courses and educational materials. Helping 100K+ people to transform and becoming transforming ambassadors using our supportive technology.

5 Years Goal

A global network of Transforming Wellbeing ambassadors that curate and energize all activities related to sharing of TransCityTech and TransTechFrame, including all the online and mobile technologies. Helping and empowering 10M+ people to transform and becoming transforming ambassadors using the supportive technology and advancing its performance. This way, the ambassadors using our technology platform and tools will be able to impact lives of a billion people. 

Our solution is highly important as it influences the future of societies. According to social sciences, environment is a strong influencer on human behavior and attitude. Thus, it is merely sufficient to improve technology-equipped spaces to achieve better lives. This is very powerful vision encompassing not only behavior change but also potential transformation of human behavior at scale.

Financial

The next year requires financial support for 3-5 full-time workers and 50 part-time ambassadors. Also funding for technical development of the mobile application, platform, online instruments and courses, and video materials.

The 5 years perspective requires sustainable growth of the aforementioned and constant updates of our technology, requiring extra financial support at each stage of the expansion. 

Technical

In the 1st year, contracting technical development of the mobile application, technology platform, online instruments and courses, and video materials. Figuring out the best fit services and platforms for creating and hosting the aforementioned.

In 5 years, coordinate technological support for the global expansion, including accessibility, languages, backups, sharing, etc. 

Legal

The initial year would require basic legal arrangements for this work, including registration, patent, entrepreneurship, contractual, and other essential needs.

Next years will require further advanced care of the aforementioned needs, especially when entering new markets. 

Cultural

Transformation and Transforming Technology can and will be perceived differently in various cultures, thus it will be important to start with the closest cultures in the 1st year, and then adapting the work to neighboring cultures in the following years.

Market

Similarly as with cultures, global markets are at the different maturity levels with regards to transformation and technology. Therefore, it will be important to begin with more mature markets in the 1st year, and then continue global expansion based on progress indicators elsewhere. 

Financial

Seeking monetary support from funds supporting innovations, startups, angel investors, and venture capitals. Collaborating with governments, municipalities, and organizations for health and sustainable development. Growing the existing revenue flow. Streamlining and expanding provided services to improve profit margin. 

Technical

Allocating funding to contract technology services for the development of mobile application, platform, online instruments and courses, video materials, as well as services and platforms for creating and hosting all of that, including accessibility, languages, backups, sharing, etc. Seeking advice from experienced entrepreneurs and advisors.

Legal

Allocating funding to contract basic legal services, including registration, patent, entrepreneurship, contractual, and other essential needs. Consulting with professionals and experts in the relevant fields.

Cultural

Networking with like-minded people in every next culture. Finding out best ways to approach it and learning about its perceptions and specifics with regards to transformation. Recruiting local ambassadors that will interact with the communities there.

Market

Conducting market assessments and surveys to estimate their readiness for transformation in the most essential areas - wellbeing, urban living, eco-mindfulness, organizations, communities, food, energy, mobility, etc.

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Our network consists of around 60 scientists and practitioners from industry and academia, specialized across the following fields: 

• human-computer interaction
• technology design
• computer systems
• persuasion
• behavior change
• social influence
• personalizing technology
• design with intent
• artificial intelligence
• machine learning
• urban innovations
• smart cities
• blockchain technology
• complex systems
• information technology
• health and wellbeing
• community development
• cyber security
• defense
• leadership
• business
• management
• marketing
• communications
• autonomy
• automation
• extended reality
• and more

As a network, we have been working together and in teams on various related earlier projects and solutions for both science and practice.

Prof. Agnis Stibe is a global thought leader on science-driven transformation and a founder of the Transforming Wellbeing Theory & Practice (transforms.me). He is a Wellbeing Ambassador, some say. At the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Media Lab), he established research on Persuasive Cities that encourage healthy and sustainable living. He believes that our world can become a better place through purposefully designed innovative spaces and experiences that successfully blend technological advancements with human nature. He has worked for Fortune 100 companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. He has received multiple prestigious awards, also from the MIT Media Lab (USA) and Nokia Foundation (Finland). He proudly serves on several advisory boards, one being for the Australian leader in healthy breakfast production Sanitarium. His work is an outstanding example and firm evidence on how science can help transforming life. His TEDx talks continue gaining global popularity.

Our belief is that wellbeing/fulfilment is the ultimate goal for every individual, family, community, society, and the mankind altogether. Scientifically speaking, wellbeing/fulfilment is the dependent variable in a structural model for our evolution. Consequently, all other aspects are contributors to achieve that at its highest potential. Constructs such as sustainability, emerging technologies, safety, democracy, and so on are then independent variables explaining their variances in wellbeing. Certainly, all these important aspects are intertwined and influencing each other all the time, however we are certain that there is a direction of how these key aspects drive an overall dynamic of our evolution.

bjfogg.com - behavioral and technology design - explaining how behavior works to create products and services that benefit everyday people around the world

alterspark.com - adopting behavioral psychology to improve the efficiency and impact of work - personalized marketing, engaging technologies, and improved customer experience

media.mit.edu/groups/city-science/overview/ - beyond smart cities - new models for urban architecture and personal vehicles responding to the unique needs and values of individuals

dusp.mit.edu/faculty/jinhua-zhao - behavioral science and transportation technology - shaping travel behavior, designing mobility system and reform urban policies

sanitarium.com.au - health and wellbeing - improving lives and a whole person view of health, increases potential to be healthy physically and mentally, to be happy

pitchnext.com - cloud services and applications - German-based startup that defines new ways of interactive learning in the times of radical change

smartvillage.biz - India smart village program - sources of earning for villagers (kamai), healthcare (dawai) and education (padhai) in the villages in order to reverse the migration to cities

thelittery.com - littering lottery - saving the planet from litter and plastic pollution by turning litter into e-lottery tickets

Ongoing - regular activities with various startups, accelerators, innovators, incubators, universities, municipalities, corporations, academics and experts

Primarily, we plan using the fee-for-service business model. We aim at growing and expanding our portfolio to the following list of services and products on transformation: a technology platform with instruments and content, a mobile application, global keynotes and public talks, masterclasses and workshops, online courses and videos, teaching materials and university lectures, and a networking tool for ambassadors. The business model also implies shared risk-revenue mechanism for the ambassadors and partners.

We also plan to deploy transforming technologies in urban spaces to impact and improve city life and performance. We also plan to implement solutions for organizations to transform their processes and behavioral dynamics.

Our solution will naturally grow and reach global expansion rapidly, as everybody is looking for sustainable changes, i.e. transformations, in their lives, businesses, organizations, communities, and societies.

TransCityTech is easy to integrate with the ongoing wellbeing initiatives at municipalities and the ministries of health and welfare. Our solution does not require additional monetary incentives and punishment mechanisms for influencing urban dwellers. Therefore, our technologies are natural complements to many solutions that health organizations and wellbeing communities have been planning and implementing over years. 

At this stage, there is already some basic financial flow, however it would be required to secure an acceleration capital for the initial growth and global expansion phase, especially for larger-scale technology deployments in urban spaces and organizational settings.

Later, as most of the offering will be digitised and automated, it shall be easy to scale, thus improving revenue stream and profit margin to gain financial independence and prosperity.

As there is an actual and increasing need for Transforming Technology almost everywhere, we are confident that the time has come for advancing our solution to wider markets and populations.

Solve will substantially help our solution and us by:

• Connecting back to MIT again, including its network and advanced technology skill sets
• Joining supportive community of peers, funders, and experts to help advance our work on Transforming City Technology
• Gaining technical expertise, media and conference exposure, and business and entrepreneurship trainings
• Building partnerships to accelerate our work, validate impact and business model
• Receiving mentorship and strategic advice from Solve and MIT
• Accessing prize funding necessary for our growth

As our TransCityTech has already partially entered several development stages simultaneously, we believe that Solve will help us to streamline and advance our progress through the following stages:

• Prototype - continue advancing and testing our TransCityTech to improve our solution
• Pilot - widening the opportunities to deploy and test of our TransCityTech in relevant communities
• Growth - rolling out our TransCityTech in multiple communities, cities, and countries
• Scale - scaling our technology globally

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Our solution would benefit from partnering mainly with the following types of organizations:

• Intelligent and responsive technology
• Sensor technology at home and in cities
• Durable and innovative outdoor technology for interaction
• Creative technology-driven urban architecture
• Mobile application design and development
• Municipalities and city governance
• Wellbeing organizations
• Urban design, planning, and development
• Autonomous vehicles and cities
• Future of work and communities
• Smart tiny wearables
• Facial and behavioral recognition
• Big data and pattern detection
• System integration and interconnectivity

AI is essential for the future of interactive urban design that is built using TransCityTech. The success of our solutions will be driven by smart algorithms and capacity to detect behavioral patterns in online streams of big data.

TransCityTech will rely on the speed and accuracy of AI supplying timely selected data about well performing individuals and communities to be displayed real-time through robust outdoor and indoor interactive technologies.

The AI Innovations Prize will definitely help improving our solution, especially the processes related to distinction of various categories of individuals in communities, so that we could train our algorithms to recognize their predominant behavioral patterns, and thus accommodate appropriate feedback models and sociotech designs.

TransCityTech is applicable for transformations designed to prevent and manage infectious disease and vector-borne illness in cities and slums. Our technology and instruments are helpful for responsible practitioners and researchers to improve solutions for coordination and communication.

Our solution not only can effectively engage individuals but also transform their attitudes and behaviors related to the infectious diseases and vector-borne illnesses in question. Our technology will stimulate people to initiate unfamiliar but very needed actions.

The Innovating Together for Healthy Cities Prize will help us deploying specialized and tailored TransCityTech applications for cities and slums to self-organize residents around their actualities and necessities with regards to diseases and illnesses, so that their communities gain progress towards healthier living and wellbeing.

TransCityTech is applicable for digital urban innovations designed to reduce factors related to gun violence, including poverty, access to firearms, and psychological trauma. 

Our technology and tools are instrumental for responsible authorities and actual communities to design solutions for influencing human behaviors and attitudes related to firearms and their use. Our solution can facilitate necessary transformations in societies.

The Everytown for Gun Safety Prize will help us to work on applying our TransCityTech to cope with very essential problem area that takes away lives of many civilians.

TransCityTech is easy to adapt for innovations that aim at supporting the quality of life for women and girls. As our solution is fundamentally based on the concept of Socially Influencing Systems, we can flexibly tailor our technology for improving gender equality and celebrate women's voices.

In fact, it is now easier than ever to harness the voices of leading women using our TransCityTech, and then amplifying them using our TransTechFrame, so to achieve permanent and perpetual transformation towards gender equality and even rights in every aspect in question.

The Innovation for Women Prize will help us demonstrating the positive power that well intended technology can impose on sensitive issues in many communities. As we are social being by nature, our technology will leverage socio-psychological theories in design scalable solutions for helping women getting their needs expressed and heard.

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