Identifying Design Opportunities for Adaptive mHealth Interventions That Target General Well-Being: Interview Study...

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Behavioral Science
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Mobile health (mHealth) interventions offer personalized support for individuals needing low-burden solutions.
• The CareQOL mHealth app has shown feasibility and acceptability for informal care partners.
• Understanding user responses to mHealth messages is crucial for optimizing intervention delivery.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate factors influencing care partners' decision-making and actions in response to mHealth behavioral messages.
• To inform the development of more tailored and personalized behavioral interventions.

Main Methods:

• Semistructured interviews were conducted with 23 participants from the treatment group of a randomized controlled trial of the CareQOL app.
• Participants were presented with representative behavioral messages to probe their influence on thoughts and actions.
• Interview data collection included message delivery time, self-reported daily perceptions, and user message ratings.

Main Results:

• Care partners exhibited varied responses to mHealth messages, performing or adjusting behaviors immediately or with delays (up to a month).
• Four key factors influencing these variations were identified: perceived workload, ability to routinize behaviors, in-the-moment willingness/ability, and overall engagement capability.
• User actions included immediate or delayed performance/adaptation of suggested behaviors.

Conclusions:

• Care partners' engagement with mHealth behavioral messages varies in immediacy and adaptation.
• Perceptions and decisions regarding behavior change are influenced by multiple user-specific factors.
• Future mHealth systems should incorporate features supporting delayed or adapted behaviors and tailor support based on identified influencing factors.