UGM’s Faculty of Psychology received a visit from a professor in Institut Teknologi Bandung (Bandung Institute of Technology), Prof. Suhono Harso Supangkat. In his visit to our faculty, Prof. Suhono gave a general lecture for doctoral students (1/31). The lecture was about technology and behavior change. In opening the lecture, Prof. Suhono stated, “Behavior is important. Failure in the application of technology happens due to not paying attention towards behavior.”
Prof. Suhono addressed many things in the lecture, which lasted for 90 minutes, more or less. In the beginning, Prof. Suhono explained that the changing era is followed by changes in behavior. According to Prof. Suhono, Indonesia has passed three eras, which are agriculture, industry, and information. Indonesia is now in an era of creativity and innovation with a generation called ‘c-generation’. Prof. Suhono also played a video about the characteristics of c-generation, born between 1992 and 2013. Prof. Suhono also stated the four new lifestyle characteristics nowadays, which are distributed, virtual, connected, and timeless.
In this lecture, Prof. Suhono introduced persuasive technology, which is technology designed to change society’s behavior not with coercion or force, but by using persuasion. Prof. Suhono also shared three of his experiences that show how important behavior is in the application of technology. Those three experiences are the forming of smart city, digital banking, and the c-gen movement. Prof. Suhono stressed that in developing the smart city, adopting technology alone was not enough, but it needed apt behavior from society. The challenge for the discipline of psychology is the understanding of not only individual behavior, but also the ecosystem in order to apply technology. [Marsa]