{"paper":{"title":"Designing for Engagement: How Self-Determination Theory Can Guide Digital Health Design for User Motivation","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.HC","authors_text":"Rafael A. Calvo, Zheyuan Zhang","submitted_at":"2026-04-08T16:44:50Z","abstract_excerpt":"User engagement is crucial for the efficacy of digital health and mental health interventions, yet existing design strategies for improving engagement remain heterogeneous, context-specific, and insufficiently grounded in motivational theory. In this paper, we propose a preliminary, theory-grounded design framework that draws on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and its sub-theory, Organismic Integration Theory (OIT), to guide the design of digital health interventions for sustained user engagement. Informed by existing literature and our own empirical data from surveys (N = 438), interviews (N "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.16276","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.16276/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}