Designing for Motivation and Engagement in a Smartphone App for Insomnia Features to consider for digital behavior change interventions for insomnia

Abstract

Insomnia is a big problem in society and currently no long-term scalable solution to this exists. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the recommended treatment for insomnia and could potentially be delivered digitally. It can be argued that motivation and engagement is very important for a digital behavior change intervention to be successful and some concepts and guidelines has previously been proposed to design for this. This thesis aims to answer what should be considered when designing for motivation and engagement in a smartphone app for behavioral change intervention in insomnia. The process to answer this question begun with research of literature and interviews with experts and people with insomnia. It continued with ideation where a design workshop was held together with the project initiators, the Gothenburgbased startup SleepCure. An interactive prototype was iteratively constructed and then evaluated remotely with potential users. This resulted in some promising features and themes that should be considered to be included in a smartphone app for behavior change intervention in insomnia.