In March, 130 researchers from 20 different countries came to Hakodate to investigate how technology alters human behavior. In turn, what they offered was both genuinely helpful and subtly concerning.
Future University Hakodate is perched atop a hill overlooking a city that seems to be undecided about spring in early March. The surrounding mountains are still covered in snow. It’s cold and bright in the harbor. The campus itself is unique; it is open-plan, purposefully collaborative, and designed with the idea that disciplinary boundaries should be blurred. Modesty is not the name. It appears that the university is serious. The twenty-first International Conference on Persuasive Technology was held there for four days in March 2026, and the location proved to be more significant than conference venues typically are. It seems appropriate to bring together experts on how digital systems alter human behavior in a structure that is specifically intended to alter how people learn and think.
The conference visited Japan for the first time in PERSUASIVE 2026. Along with program co-chairs Raian Ali from Qatar and Roberto Legaspi from KDDI Research in Tokyo, Professor Kaoru Sumi of Future University Hakodate served as general chair. Twenty countries on five continents sent about 130 researchers. Over two hundred people attended the activity and behavior computing conference that was held concurrently with it, ABC 2026. In the two decades of the conference, the Springer-published proceedings grew to be the biggest volume. It’s unclear if this is due to the topic’s increasing urgency or just the field’s broadening scope. Most likely both.
The tone set by the two keynote speakers was genuinely inquisitive rather than comforting or alarmist. Sorbonne University professor Catherine Pelachaud gave a talk on socially interactive agents and how emotional communication through virtual characters could help change behavior. Genuine therapeutic benefit is the goal of the meticulous and practical research. Then, in a keynote address titled “Avatar and the Future Society,” Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University—a roboticist well-known throughout the world for creating humanoid robots, including one based on himself—discussed how avatars and humanoid machines might alter human identity and communication in the ensuing decades. Sitting with that combination and not feeling the pull of something big and unsolved is difficult. A researcher is trying to improve the supportiveness of digital agents. What happens to humanity when the digital agent begins to blend with the person it represents is the question posed by the other.
This year’s paper awards focused on a few themes that have been developing in the field for a while. The field is producing the kind of rigorous data that can be transferred from an academic journal into a regulatory filing, as demonstrated by Kiemute Oyibo’s best paper on dark patterns, which measures their intrusiveness and relative “darkness” with empirical precision. A different kind of contribution is the joint best paper on value-sensitive design in eye donation consent forms, which asks how persuasive design principles can be applied to make a challenging, frequently avoided human decision more approachable and truthful. Both papers are excellent. It speaks volumes about the variety of work this community views as essential to its mission that they were recognized in the same ceremony.
HyperCare, an AI-driven personalized intervention system for ongoing hypertension management created by a team affiliated with Rita Orji at Dalhousie—one of the most well-known researchers in persuasive health technology working today—was one of the runner-up awards. The real-time adaptation of the system to a user’s health data and behavioral patterns is either a preview of something that needs to be closely monitored or precisely the kind of tool that makes persuasive technology worth developing. The conflict between those readings dominated the majority of the conference’s serious discussions, and it is most likely both.
The conference proceedings did not provide what the social program did. Each day, participants left the sessions and entered Hakodate. They went to Goryokaku Tower and gazed down at the geometric perfection of the star-shaped fort below. This nineteenth-century building was intended to control adversaries’ approach and direct movement, which is the kind of historical detail that seems different after spending the entire day talking about digital systems meant to affect behavior. Live music and a traditional sake barrel opening were features of the gala dinner. March in Hakodate, which is cold, coastal, and far from the establishments where the majority of participants typically work, proved to be genuinely conducive to thinking clearly about complex issues.
The next meeting is held at Santiago de Compostela. A city centered on a pilgrimage that attracts individuals from all over the world who come to walk a long way toward something they think is important. The persuasive technology community would probably prefer to avoid the obvious metaphor that is available there. However, the journey is still ongoing.
