The Design of a Digital Behaviour Change Intervention for Third-Level Student Illicit Substance Use: A Persona Building Approach
Open accessAbstract
Illicit substance use among third-level students is an issue of increasing concern. Digital behavioural change interventions have been developed to target this population, but reports of their effectiveness are mixed. The importance of end-user involvement in digital intervention development has been well established, but it appears that many interventions in this area did not engage end-users during development. This absence may have affected engagement, undermining their potential effectiveness. This paper describes the process and contributions of a persona-building approach in the development of a digital behaviour change intervention tailored to the needs of third-level students. Nine exploratory persona-building workshops were carried out with 31 students, and 7 project team members to develop personas for heavy, occasional and non-substance using third-level students. Early analysis has identified five archetypes which will contribute to the design of an acceptable and user-friendly intervention, and to the identification of targeted behavioural change techniques.
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Personas were seen as a useful tool to tailor the content and design of eHealth technologies and can be connected to the requirements or to BCTs.
“Finally, personas were seen as a useful tool to tailor the content and design of eHealth technologies and can be connected to the requirements or to BCTs”
From Methods for Human-Centered eHealth Development: Narrative Scoping Review (2022) · cites this paper as [73]
To structure the persona-building process, researchers need to identify characteristic categories that need to be included in the persona, in which attention should also be paid to skills and attitudes related to the to-be-developed eHealth technology.
“Second, to structure the persona-building process, researchers need to identify characteristic categories that need to be included in the persona, in which attention should also be paid to skills and attitudes related to the to-be-developed eHealth technology.”
From Methods for Human-Centered eHealth Development: Narrative Scoping Review (2022) · cites this paper as [73]
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- Authors
- Dick, S., Heavin, C., Vasiliou, V. S., Davoren, M. P., Dockray, S., Linehan, C., & Byrne, M.
- Affiliations
- University College Cork (IE)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
- Published
- 2020
- ISSN
- 1530-1605 (ISSN-L)
- 2572-6862
- OpenAlex
- W3005055253
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 0.91
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (acceptedVersion)
- Journal of the Association for Information Systems (submittedVersion)
- Cork Open Research Archive (University College Cork, Ireland) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- University College Cork
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Persona Design and Applications
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
- Keywords
- digital behaviour change interventions, illicit drug use, university students, end-user involvement, intervention design, user engagement, behaviour change techniques, user archetypes
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