Theory-Informed Design Guidelines for Shared Decision Making Tools for Health Behaviour Change

Abstract

Recently, the design and development of persuasive applications to support behaviour change in healthcare have gained interest. However, achieving sustained behaviour change remains challenging. Shared decision making (SDM) is increasingly advocated for making preference-sensitive decisions. In SDM, the patient and caregiver combine the patient’s preferences, values, goals, and context with the medical evidence and expert opinions to make an informed decision. The link between shared decision making and behaviour change has not yet been investigated thoroughly. Furthermore, there is little guidance on designing applications providing SDM support. In this paper, we focus on how SDM can help in achieving sustained behaviour change by presenting how SDM can bring in the caregiver perspective in the well-known, patient-oriented Fogg Behaviour Model. We propose seven principles to design a system aimed at supporting patients and caregivers during SDM encounters when making decisions regarding behaviour change. We conclude with an illustration of how our proposed design principles have been applied in two existing applications developed to support SDM for behaviour change.