Developing Requirements for a Digital Self-Care Intervention for Adults With Heart Failure: Qualitative Workshop...

Area of Science:

• Digital health interventions
• Behavioral science
• Heart failure management

Background:

• Heart failure self-care is complex, requiring effective long-term management strategies.
• Existing interventions lack robust evidence, necessitating theory-informed and user-centered approaches.
• Digital technologies offer potential to enhance heart failure self-care when guided by behavioral theory and user input.

Purpose of the Study:

• To define user-centered, theory-informed requirements for a digital intervention supporting heart failure self-care.
• To integrate the Behavior Change Wheel (BCW) with user-centered design (UCD) for barrier identification and intervention requirement generation.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study involving 4 workshops with heart failure patients (n=16) and caregivers (n=4).
• Utilized UCD principles to explore self-care barriers and gather intervention ideas.
• Coded barriers using the COM-B model and Theoretical Domains Framework; analyzed ideas via requirements analysis and affinity mapping.

Main Results:

• Identified self-care barriers across COM-B components and 11 Theoretical Domains Framework domains.
• Translated barriers into 28 distinct user needs.
• Generated 6 intervention component themes (education, monitoring, support, planning, healthcare support) mapped to 7 BCW functions, and 6 user requirement themes (design, usability, personalization, engagement, support, integration).

Conclusions:

• Integrating UCD with the BCW effectively develops user-centered, theoretically grounded intervention requirements.
• Actionable requirements identified bridge the gap between behavioral understanding and effective digital solutions.
• Future research should focus on prototyping and evaluating these requirements for feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness.