Send Me a Different Message: Utilizing Cognitive Space to Create Engaging Message Triggers

Social systems and applications often rely on message triggers to promote, remind and even persuade people to perform certain actions. However, repeated exposure to these triggers can lead to boredom, annoyance and decreased engagement. While existing research suggests that diversification of trigger contents may mitigate these issues, no systematic way of introducing it has been proposed. This paper proposes two message diversification strategies based on the use of cognitive spaces: 1) target-diverse -- using concepts cognitively close to the targeted action; and 2) self-diverse -- using concepts cognitively close to the message's recipient. Through a controlled experiment we found that the self-diverse strategy reduces annoyance and boredom from repeated exposure and that both strategies increase perceived informativeness and helpfulness of the triggers. In a subsequent 2-week long field deployment focused on assessing the effects of the self-diverse strategy, we found that this strategy results in higher activity completion through supporting awareness, providing more information, and making the triggers more personally relevant. These diverse triggers are perceived as motivators rather than simple reminders. We conclude with insights on how to design and generate diverse messages.