What is Captology

Persuasive design (PD) is concerned with the use of computing technology for persuasive purposes. It thereby captures a comprehensive and important trend in CMC, human-computer interaction, and software development in general. This chapter describes the basic concepts of PD as well as its development from its inception in the late 90s until now. So far, rhetoric has played a modest role in the field. However, it is shown that rhetoric offers a major step forward in consolidating PD as a discipline. The concepts of PD in many respects have a theoretical basis in and are better understood with reference to rhetoric; a number of practical guidelines for PD can and should be developed on the basis of rhetoric; and ‘epistemic rhetoric’ offers a sound epistemology for PD, which is at the moment lacking. Arguably, a rhetorical turn is required for coming to grips with the problem of defining PD and placing it properly as a special case of CMC, namely computer mediated persuasion.