Personalizing mobile applications for health based on user profiles: A preference matrix from a scoping review

The World Health Organization identifies unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, as significant risk factors contributing to mortality and morbidity, underscoring the necessity to adopt healthier habits. The increasing prevalence of health applications (apps) presents opportunities for promoting healthier lifestyles. Notably, personalized mobile health (mHealth) interventions can enhance user engagement and their effectiveness. Our scoping review aims to contribute to guide the personalization of mHealth interventions for health behavior change by defining which mechanisms should be favored for a given user profile. Online databases were searched to identify articles published between 2008 and 2024 describing the topic of personalization, behavior change apps, and mobile app mechanisms. Of 1806 articles identified, 18 articles were retained. We then categorized the mechanisms and user profiles described in the selected articles into existing taxonomies. Finally, the relationship between the user profiles and mechanisms were reported. The four user profiles identified included personality and gamer profiles. Twenty-one mechanisms extracted from the articles were categorized as behavioral change techniques, gamification, or mobile app mechanisms, with limited numbers of preference relations between mechanisms and user profiles. The relation matrix was not complete and covered only 51% of possible relations: game mechanisms, 30%; behavioral change techniques, 16%; and app mechanisms, 5%. Two user profiles, the Big Five (18%) and Hexad scale (20%), covered 38% of relations, whereas the two remaining user profiles contributed to the remaining 13%. Social mechanisms, including competition, cooperation, and social comparison, exhibit strong connections to user profiles and are pivotal in persuasive system design. Self-efficacy theory links mechanisms such as self-monitoring, social persuasion, and rewards to behavior change. However, only 51% of potential relationships between profiles and mechanisms were identified. Adapting mHealth content based on user profiles requires reliable personality assessments and privacy-conscious data collection to enable personalized, profile-specific interventions for improved outcomes.