Designing for diversity: Dynamic persuasive strategies in mHealth app development

This study examines the impact of persuasive system design (PSD) in mobile health (mHealth) apps, focusing on how personalized persuasive strategies, based on users’ psychological characteristics can enhance engagement, behavior change and efficacy. With the ubiquity of mobile devices reshaping behavior and perspectives, there's a growing need to personalize digital health technologies to individual users’ characteristics. This approach challenges the conventional 'one size fits all' model, recognizing the diversity in user needs and motivations. This research employed a multiphase experimental design, developing and evaluating 25 mHealth app screens using PSD principles. This involved rigorous prototyping, expert review, and iterative design, ensuring that each screen effectively incorporated persuasive elements tailored for diverse user groups. The study's findings highlight the effectiveness of combining primary task support and dialogue support in mHealth screens to maximize user engagement. Furthermore, the research underscores the importance of system credibility and social support in persuasive design, although these elements require careful implementation due to users’ varying perceptions of persuasiveness among users. This work significantly contributes to the field by providing insights into how digital health technologies can be optimally designed to cater to the dynamic psychological makeup of users, ultimately enhancing user engagement with a focus on behavior change.