Identifying Opportunities and Envisioning Ecological Momentary Interoceptive Awareness Interventions With Young Women

Developing an awareness of internal sensations, or interoceptive awareness (IA), can benefit those with various mental health concerns, including disordered eating. Although IA interventions exist, there is limited research on embedding this skill into daily life through ecological momentary interventions (EMIs). Multidisciplinary research has focused on how and when to deliver EMIs based on users’ contexts, but often oversimplifies or relies on proxies to represent their circumstances and environments. Here, we explore context through a user-centered lens, investigating how and when 21 young women are willing to practice IA. During a 2-week experience sampling study, they shared their activities and openness to IA throughout each day. Later, they sketched EMIs to scaffold their activities with IA and shared further qualitative insights across several one-on-one interviews. Our findings identify activities and internal and external qualities conducive to IA and offer broader implications for designing digital EMIs tailored to users’ contexts.