Developing Requirements for a Digital Self-Care Intervention for Adults With Heart Failure: Qualitative Workshop Study.

Background: Heart failure is a complex syndrome that requires long-term management, including self-care, to prevent decompensation and hospitalization. Although a range of interventions exists, evidence supporting their effectiveness remains limited, prompting calls for more theory-informed and user-centered approaches. The rapid advancement of mobile and digital technologies offers new opportunities to improve self-care, particularly when interventions are grounded in behavioral theory and shaped by user input.

Objective: This study aimed to define user-centered, theory-informed requirements for a digital intervention to support self-care among people with heart failure. We combined the Behavior Change Wheel (BCW) with user-centered design (UCD) to explore self-care barriers and generate actionable intervention requirements.

Methods: A qualitative study was conducted, involving 4 workshops with people with heart failure (n=16) and informal caregivers (n=4) across metropolitan and regional Australia. Guided by UCD principles, the workshops explored self-care barriers and elicited ideas for a digital intervention. Barriers were coded using the capability, opportunity, motivation, and behavior (COM-B) model and the Theoretical Domains Framework to identify behavioral determinants and user needs. Ideas and preferences for the intervention were analyzed using requirements analysis and affinity mapping to generate themes describing intervention components ("what" the system should do) and user requirements ("how" it should operate). Intervention components were then mapped to relevant BCW intervention functions.

Results: Participants identified self-care barriers across all 3 COM-B components and 11 of 14 Theoretical Domains Framework domains, including barriers related to capability (eg, lack of knowledge and forgetfulness), opportunity (eg, busy lifestyle and limited access to resources), and motivation (eg, emotional burden and lack of confidence). These were translated into 28 distinct user needs. From participants' ideas, 6 themes relating to intervention components were identified: education, monitoring and feedback, social connection and support, psychological and emotional support, planning and preparing, and health care support. These components mapped to 7 BCW functions: education, persuasion, incentivization, training, environmental restructuring, modeling, and enablement. Additionally, 6 user requirement themes were developed: physical design, accessibility and usability, personalization and control, engagement and user experience, support and implementation, and integration and system organization.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the value of integrating UCD with the BCW to develop intervention requirements that are both user-centered and theoretically grounded. By exploring both what the intervention should do and how it should do it, we identified actionable requirements that bridge the gap between understanding behavior and developing effective solutions. Future work can focus on translating these requirements into prototype interventions and evaluating their feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness.