Designing for Sustained Motivation: A Review of Self-Determination Theory in Behaviour Change Technologies
Lize Alberts, Ulrik Lyngs, Kai Lukoff
TL;DR
This paper addresses the challenge of sustaining behaviour change through technology by applying Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to the design of behaviour change technologies (BCTs). It conducts a systematic review of 15 ACM-sourced papers to extract 50 SDT-guided design suggestions, revealing a predominant focus on satisfying basic psychological needs to boost engagement rather than facilitating deep internalisation of the target behaviours. The authors differentiate two SDT-driven pathways for sustained motivation: increasing intrinsic enjoyment via autonomy/competence/relatedness versus enabling internalisation toward autonomous regulation (OIT). They argue that prioritising internalisation offers stronger prospects for long-term change and outline methodological and measurement gaps, offering guidance for more theory-driven, longitudinal, and validated SDT applications in HCI. The work contributes to optimizing wellbeing-focused technology by aligning design features with SDT constructs and highlighting opportunities to promote enduring motivation beyond the life of the BCT.
Abstract
Recent years have seen a surge in applications and technologies aimed at motivating users to achieve personal goals and improve their wellbeing. However, these often fail to promote long-term behaviour change, and sometimes even backfire. We consider how self-determination theory (SDT), a metatheory of human motivation and wellbeing, can help explain why such technologies fail, and how they may better help users internalise the motivation behind their goals and make enduring changes in their behaviour. In this work, we systematically reviewed 15 papers in the ACM Digital Library that apply SDT to the design of behaviour change technologies (BCTs). We identified 50 suggestions for design features in BCTs, grounded in SDT, that researchers have applied to enhance user motivation. However, we find that SDT is often leveraged to optimise engagement with the technology itself rather than with the targeted behaviour change per se. When interpreted through the lens of SDT, the implication is that BCTs may fail to cultivate sustained changes in behaviour, as users' motivation depends on their enjoyment of the intervention, which may wane over time. An underexplored opportunity remains for designers to leverage SDT to support users to internalise the ultimate goals and value of certain behaviour changes, enhancing their motivation to sustain these changes in the long term.