Making time for mindfulness

Highlights

• HBCSSs must be compatible with users lives and values to be used and be effective.

• People struggle to fit app use into busy urban lifestyles.

• The Reasoned Action Approach accounts for many aspect of take-up and use.

• Use of mindfulness app is also influenced by emotions and expectations.

Abstract

Objective

Digital mental wellbeing interventions are increasingly being used by the general public as well as within clinical treatment. Among these, mindfulness and meditation programs delivered through mobile device applications are gaining popularity. However, little is known about how people use and experience such applications and what are the enabling factors and barriers to effective use. To address this gap, the study reported here sought to understand how users adopt and experience a popular mobile-based mindfulness intervention.

Methods

A qualitative semi-structured interview study was carried out with 16 participants aged 25–38 (M = 32.5) using the commercially popular mindfulness application Headspace for 30–40 days. All participants were employed and living in a large UK city. The study design and interview schedule were informed by an autoethnography carried out by the first author for thirty days before the main study began. Results were interpreted in terms of the Reasoned Action Approach to understand behaviour change.

Results

The core concern of users was fitting the application into their busy lives. Use was also influenced by patterns in daily routines, on-going reflections about the consequences of using the app, perceived self-efficacy, emotion and mood states, personal relationships and social norms. Enabling factors for use included positive attitudes towards mindfulness and use of the app, realistic expectations and positive social influences. Barriers to use were found to be busy lifestyles, lack of routine, strong negative emotions and negative perceptions of mindfulness.

Conclusions

Mobile wellbeing interventions should be designed with consideration of people's beliefs, affective states and lifestyles, and should be flexible to meet the needs of different users. Designers should incorporate features in the design of applications that manage expectations about use and that support users to fit app use into a busy lifestyle. The Reasoned Action Approach was found to be a useful theory to inform future research and design of persuasive mental wellbeing technologies.

Introduction

The penetration of ubiquitous technologies into every corner of our lives provides excellent opportunities for new forms of health and wellbeing interventions. [1] Among these technologies, mobile applications offer cost-effective methods of healthcare delivery. Mobile devices are carried with the user throughout the day, can connect to the internet and can deliver interventions using features such as push notifications, text based information and rich media content. These features make mobile devices particularly suitable for the delivery of mental wellbeing interventions [2]. Consequently, there is a growing market for consumer healthcare applications that deliver interventions such as stress reduction and anxiety management programs. If such technologies are to be effective vehicles for health behaviour change, then it is necessary to understand both how they are used in practice, what are the key features of experience, and what are the barriers and enablers of use. A deeper understanding of these issues will contribute to theoretical discussions about the design of e-health technologies and persuasive design (see, for example, [3], [4]). The study reported here investigated how people adopted one mental wellbeing app (Headspace, www.headspace.com), how they fitted use into their lives, and how they experienced use over time.