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The need to compete for users’ attention and provide them with the best user experience has increased the use of persuasion strategies in modern systems. Currently, Persuasive Systems (PSs) promote healthy behavior for well-being, energy consumption, and learning. Although the educational domain has limited investigation compared to other areas, PSs in education have been shown to be effective in motivating students. This paper summarizes the existing evidence on Persuasive Educational Systems (PESs), emphasizing research on the current design methods, evaluation methods, and characteristics. We follow Kitchenham’s method to perform a systematic literature review about PESs published between 2014 and 2020, with 19 relevant studies selected. We highlight some results from the analysis of selected papers such as persuasion strategies, use of a personalized persuasion technique, study of students’ susceptibility to strategies, integration of gamification mechanisms, and proposed tools to design PES. Moreover, we discuss interesting facts such as the common practice of using more than one tool to design PES, aspects of interaction, persuasion, learning, and the challenges in evaluating persuasive impact. Finally, as the main contribution of the paper we identify the seven necessary characteristics to build a persuasive educational system.

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<p class="Abstract">Computational sciences have gradually allowed scientists to develop novel technological projects to promote a healthy way of life. Most efforts have focus in promoting healthy diets and physical activity. Sleeping is also a crucial activity for humans. Poor sleep quality has adverse effects on health and might lead to physical and mental deterioration. Many computer systems have been used to measure sleep quantity and quality; however, there are few efforts to guide users about aspects that can influence sleeping. Sleep hygiene is a concept that allows controlling sleep-related habits and promoting good sleep quality; unfortunately, modern lifestyles can cause people to adopt wrong habits without being aware of their impact on sleep quality. This work describes a framework developed to guide user’s during the day in order to achieve good sleep quality during sleep time. A set of sleep hygiene factors (SHFs) intended to control hours before going to sleep was defined. The framework identifies personal SHFs using machine learning algorithms; furthermore, a new algorithm was designed to improve results. The framework also includes a mobile persuasive system to encourage users to control personal SHFs.</p>

<p>Unobtrusiveness is one of the main issues concerning health-related systems. Many developers affirm that their systems do not burden users; however, this is not always achieved. This article evaluates the obtrusiveness of various systems developed to improve sleep quality. The systems analyzed are related to sleep hygiene, since it has become an interesting topic for researchers, physicians and people in general, mainly because it has become part of the methods used to estimate a persons’ health status A set of design elements are presented as keys to achieving unobtrusiveness. We propose a scale to measure the level of unobtrusiveness and use it to evaluate several systems, with a focus on smartphone applications. </p>