RESOURCES
Behavior Change and Digital Health
Below are some resources/conceptualizations that I believe to be important to consider when trying to design a useful product. What’s common to these conceptualization is that they all consider user ability and motivations to engage in helpful activities, and how the digital health program should be designed to address these aspects.
With that being written it is important to acknowledge that there isn’t a one size fits all perspective that can be helpful to all companies who develop products aimed at helping others. Each product deserves its own tailoring in terms of the conceptualizations and perspectives to utilize in order to best optimize its development.
I hope that you'll find value in these resources.
Amit
Learning about quality aspects of digital health programs
If you would like to learn about the basic quality aspects that define a digital health program I recommend that you’ll read about Enlight suite of assessments, which were based on a rigorous systematic review of all published quality creteria in digital health domain.
Enlight is comprised of six quality assessments (Usability, Visual Design, Content, User-Engagement, Therapeutic-Persuasiveness, Therapeutic-Alliance) and four checklists (Credibility, Evidence Base, Privacy & Security).
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To download a paper describing the development of Enlight click here.
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To download and read about Enlight quality assessments predictive value in understanding user engagement click here.
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To download Enlight complete set of Assessments that includes all quality assessments and checklists click here.
For additional information about Enlight scientific approach and to read reviews on publicly available digital programs please click here to look into MindTools.io website that we developed in the past (bear in mind that as it is based on non-profit related activity the site is not updated).
Learning about relevant concepts of digital interventions for behavior change
There are several relevant concepts that I worked on with colleagues that I highly recommend looking into when thinking about the design of interventions that are meant to help people.
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This document describes the importance of Effort Optimization (click here). It presents a different way to think about the combination between people’s motivation and ability to change and how to design effort optimized products. I had the privilege of writing it with Dr. Fred Muench, who is a fabulous researcher, talented entrepreneur and my partner in crime in many digital health projects. Fred was actually the one who came up with the idea for this paper and the following one.
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This document presents information about the use of digital triggers in behavior change (click here). This is especially important now, in a time when people are commonly distracted by bad alerts and undesired pushed-notifications.
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Download this document to read about the idea of Micro-Interventions (click here) as a way of designing programs that respect that people do not want to engage in interventions for long periods of time.
For training opportunities click here.
For details about my academic work click here to my lab website.