Message Frame-Tailoring in Digital Health Communication: Intervention Redesign and Usability Testing

Area of Science:

• Communication Science
• Health Psychology
• Digital Health

Background:

• Digital health interventions show promise but require optimization for sustained effectiveness.
• Personal Advice in Stopping smoking (PAS) demonstrated small, short-term smoking cessation success rates.
• Message frame-tailoring based on autonomy needs is an untested strategy to enhance interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if message frame-tailoring increases the effectiveness of content-tailored digital health interventions.
• To redesign the PAS program to incorporate autonomy-supportive or controlling message frames.
• To extend framing, tailoring, and self-determination theories.

Main Methods:

• Redesigned the PAS program in collaboration with experts, smokers, and students.
• Employed usability testing, think-aloud methodology, heuristic evaluations, and a web-based experiment.
• Integrated message frame-tailoring based on individual autonomy needs.

Main Results:

• Identified optimal autonomy-supportive and controlling message frames.
• Determined the autonomy need cutoff for tailoring message frames.
• Achieved optimized usability for the redesigned intervention.

Conclusions:

• A redesigned digital health intervention with message frame-tailoring and optimal usability was developed.
• The redesign process focused on extending relevant communication and psychological theories.
• This study provides a detailed account of the PAS program redesign for enhanced smoking cessation support.