Analyzing Behavior in the Digital Age

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Analyzing Behavior in the Digital Age

• Joe Sasson, Ph.D.
• FABA/OBM 2007

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Technology and Privacy

• Unique printout from color laser printers track
  which laser printer a piece of paper came from
  US SS
• CD burner serial numbers left on the burned CD
  traceable back to your computer
• Extra info in digital pictures traceable to
  camera
• Cell phones can be tracked, and the whereabouts
  information logged

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Technology and Privacy

• Target Analyze movement and flow through the
  store.
• People staying in an aisle too long?
• Justin Barber case
• Google has a two year database on all searches!
• Justin Barber Googled "trauma cases gunshot right
  chest and a week later he searched for "medical
  trauma gunshot chest."

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Assumptions of a Behavior Analyst

• We cannot observe the behavior of millions of
  people in their homes efficiently
• Measuring results is an appropriate way of
  measuring some behaviors / behavioral chains
• Society will continue to move more of its
  activities (e.g., networking, shopping, working,
  etc.) online

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The Era of the Brave New Web

• Monitoring tele-workers
• Adapting websites to drive the desired behavior

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Tele-workers

• Many benefits of employing tele-workers
• Reduced pollution traffic
• Disaster insulation
• Better recruitment opportunities
• 45.1M tele-workers in 2005 (ITAC)
• 50M by 2008 (Network World)
• How do you do OBM interventions with this group?
• Technology Spy-software

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Monitoring / Measuring Employee Behavior

• On the surface
• Computer start and shutdown time
• Total working time, average working time per day,
  per week, etc.
• Tracking all the Internet sites visited. Tracking
  site address URL, site name, start time, end
  time, total usage
• Tracking printed documents' titles, number of
  document pages printed

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Monitoring / Measuring Employee Behavior

• A little deeper
• Activity monitoring - Session time, active time,
  idle time, keyboard buttons pressed and buttons
  clicked. Instant viewing of screens and typed
  keystrokes.
• Monitor and log all emails sent and received.
• Track application name, window title, app start
  time, app shutdown time, total app running time.
• Events Timeline Logging View all of a users
  activities in an organized chronologically
  ordered list.

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Monitoring / Measuring Employee Behavior

• Permanent Products
• Screenshot saving function that allows captured
  snapshots to be browsed later as a slide show
• Logging of all metrics
• Log files can be exported MS Excel for analysis
• Combine and export log files from different
  computers

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Monitoring / Measuring Employee Behavior

• Installation / Ethics
• Installation from a remote location and they run
  invisibly
• User Alerts - If you would like the remote user
  to know he/she is being monitored you can
  configure the software to display a custom alert
  message each time they start the computer or
  resume a session

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Enforce Rules / Eliminate Competing Contingencies

• Filter Applications
• Control what programs users cannot run
• Filter Websites
• Control what websites users can and cannot visit
• Filter Chat
• Control which chat messengers users can and
  cannot use
• Receive Email Alerts
• Receive notifications when a user
• Runs an unwanted website, chat client, or
  application
• Send alerts when the computer is started/shutdown

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In OBM these systems can be used

• To research the effectiveness of interventions
  aimed at improving lone worker performance
• To create benchmarks of
• Task completion times
• Hours spent working
• To eliminate competing behaviors
• e.g., ESPN.com
• Other chat programs
• To notify people of rule or condition changes
  when dealing with hundreds of participants all
  over the country

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Opportunities

• Creates an entire new realm of measurable
  behavior
• Can have a broad impact on many people while
  using a reasonable number of resources
• Technological offerings are there to help us to
  expand our field, but who is taking technology up
  on the offer?

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On-line Consumers Create Revenue

• Driving Sales and Changing the Behavior of Web
  Site Visitors

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Driving Sales / Changing Customer Behavior

• Who and how many people are visiting your web
  site?
• Which pages do they look at most?
• What kind of search engines and search phrases do
  they use to find your website?
• From which sites do visitors arrive at your site?
  
• From which countries, regions and cities do they
  come from?
• How many pages do they look at?
• How long do they stay at your website?
• How do your visitors navigate?
• What kind of technology do they use to view your
  web site?

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The Behavior Analysts Contribution

• Many know how to get computer data better than
  most of us.
• We know what to do with that data!
• We can change behavior and evaluate the impact on
  increased employee productivity or corporate
  profitability.
• --To stay at the forefront as a science and a
  practice, we must become educated about and use
  software that will help us to measure behavior in
  the digital age.

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Questions?

• Joseph R. Sasson, Ph.D.
• jsasson_at_medaxiom.com