Lessons from an Online Stop-Smoking Intervention: Adaptations for Mobile Implementation

Abstract

A web-based tailored intervention yields valuable lessons for transitioning content from personal computers to the smaller form factor of a mobile device. Lessons learned from a stop-smoking intervention designed for the National Cancer Institute site www.smokefree.gov can provide a useful framework for developing tailored mHealth apps. Issues of instrument deployment, data quality, item design, user characteristics, motivation to improve health, barriers to improvement, and health behavior history and current status may be essential considerations in creating an engaging, effective user experience. Appropriate, relevant inclusion of alternative approaches could help users set and maintain health behaviors such as tobacco abstinence.