What do you need to consider when designing mobile health intervention?

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive guide for designing theory-driven digital health interventions, emphasizing behaviour change theories, a structured workflow, and practical tools, supported by case studies from a European project.

Contribution

It introduces the SATO design workflow aligned with the IDEAS framework and Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, including a checklist and app design templates for digital health interventions.

Findings

Extended BCIO to support multiple clinical goals in one app

Developed a practical guide with case studies and templates

Highlighted the importance of behaviour change theories in design

Abstract

Designing theory-driven digital health interventions is a challenging task that needs support. We created a guide for the incomers in the field on how to design digital health interventions with case studies from the Cancer Better Life Experience (CAPABLE) European project. The guide explains how behaviour change theories can inform customisation and personalisation of the intervention. The proposed SATO (ideaS expAnded wiTh bciO) design workflow is based on the IDEAS (Integrate, Design, Assess, and Share) framework and is aligned with the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). We provide a checklist of the activities that should be performed during intervention planning as well as app design templates which bundle together relevant behaviour change techniques. In the process of creating this guide, we found the necessity to extend the BCIO to support the scenarios of multiple clinical goals in the same application. The extension utilizes existing classes and properties where possible.