Habit change as a learning process: Design framework for mobile interventions

Health interventions aim to influence behavior by creating healthy habits that substitute existing unhealthy ones. Habits are often deeply ingrained but also easily disrupted in new situations. This makes changing habits a life-long learning and adaptation process rather than a one-time task of limited duration. Therefore, applying modern understanding of learning could be fruitful in designing effective and sustainable health interventions. This paper presents the initial design framework for interventions based on learning theories, and also introduces a mobile habit change application. The application guides the user in habit formation through small daily changes, supported by a user-selectable cartoonish avatar with varied styles of dialogue.