Motivating Adherence to Exercise Plans Through a Personalized Mobile Health App: Enhanced Action Design Research...

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Behavioral Science
• Digital Health

Background:

• Physical inactivity is a global health concern, with mobile health (mHealth) apps emerging as tools for self-management.
• Limited research exists on the effectiveness of mHealth apps in promoting sustained exercise adherence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the action design research (ADR) process for developing effective mHealth apps for exercise self-management.
• To investigate the impact of motivational messages, personality types, and message repetition on exercise adherence.
• To integrate field experiments into the design process for iterative refinement and principle discovery.

Main Methods:

• An enhanced ADR process incorporating a field experiment was used to develop and refine an mHealth app.
• The app, built with Apple ResearchKit, targeted users with at least two months of app usage.
• Participants (N=89) were randomized into 12 groups based on personality (thinking/feeling), message type (emotional/logical/none), and repetition (none/once).

Main Results:

• Personality type and message repetition significantly impacted exercise adherence.
• Feeling personality types showed 18.15% higher adherence than thinking types.
• Emotional messages and repeated messages improved adherence, particularly for thinking types (27.34% increase).

Conclusions:

• Combining design science with field experiments enhances the ADR process for mHealth app development.
• Personalized motivational strategies, considering personality and message repetition, are key to improving exercise adherence.
• Findings provide a foundation for developing advanced mHealth apps for chronic disease management.