Brian G. Danaher*, Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, United States John R. Seeley, Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, United States Håvar Brendryen, Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research (SERAF), Oslo, Norway Milagra S. Tyler, Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, United States Track: Research Presentation Topic: Mobile & Tablet Health Applications Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2014-08-05

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Background: As described in the 2014 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, there remains little debate that “...cigarette smoking has caused an enormous avoidable public health tragedy.” Many smokers want to quit and are interested in obtaining assistance in smoking cessation programs. Technology-delivered interventions offer the promise of cost-effectively reaching a large number of smokers. Fortunately, studies have shown the efficacy of Web-based smoking cessation interventions. However, Web programs tend to passively wait for participants to visit. More proactive mHealth interventions that “push” program content to participant smartphones appear to offer potentially more promise, and they deserve increased research attention. MobileQuit is a proactive smartphone-based smoking cessation intervention, which is supported by a research grant from the U.S. National Cancer Society. In a forthcoming RCT we will compare the efficacy of MobileQuit to a Web-based intervention that overlaps in content but is less proactive and lacks the smartphone-adapted information architecture. Our formative research informed the RCT by helping to optimize the program design for the smartphone.

Objective: In describing our formative research, we will describe how we have interwoven the health behavior change principles of a smoking cessation intervention with the technology features and the behavioral usage patterns of smartphones. We will explore how the resulting information architecture enables the program to deliver multiple “chunks” of program content (behavioral strategies and motivational messages) over multiple days in order to improve engagement and program efficacy. We also will describe the design of the forthcoming large-scale RCT that will compare the smartphone-based intervention to a best-practices Web-based smoking cessation intervention.

Methods: We used an iterative process of focus groups and usability testing to develop the smartphone intervention.

Results: We describe results from our formative research and use screenshots and design diagrams to highlight MobileQuit’s resulting features. We focus on describing example engagement objects to differentiate ways that the smartphone intervention differs from typical Web-based intervention designs.

Conclusions: Our presentation highlights the logic behind the design if an innovative mHealth intervention for smoking cessation – along with the salient differences in information architecture and program design between smartphone and Web interventions. We propose that results from our RCT will help inform the role of information architecture in smartphone program design. Specifically, the proactive tunnel-based delivery of program “chunks” designed to enhance engagement and efficacy. Our results will be relevant for mHealth interventions, generally, and for smoking cessation, specifically.