One reason people postpone their financial planning for retirement is the intimidating alien nature of many of the financial activities and concepts involved. A technique for alleviating this distress, imparting the requisite knowledge and motivating the necessary action, is to use a series of "microworlds." The first microworld, chosen by the subject, should draw the subject into a computerized experience of a familiar and beloved domain of knowledge, e.g., gardening or vacation planning. The next microworld would be that of the target knowledge domain, in this case, financial retirement planning. The plan is that the preexisting charm of the subject's own chosen real-world activity will transfer to the chosen microworld, and then to the target microworld. The goal of this research is to develop computerized microworlds that will draw people into constructive activity in such a way that the motivation, energy, and knowledge gained will be transferred back to the real world of financial retirement planning. To be cost effective, a software development environment for the production of all these microworlds must be created. A further aim is the extension of this software development environment to the production of microworld-based educational products.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:The research should result in a prototype of computer software that individuals will use to make financial plans for their retirement. In Phase II, the application will be expanded and the prototype will be extended to run on less expensive, and hence more available, computers. Future by-products include financial planning software to be offered by professionals and educational software.National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
