User Perceptions of Mobile Health Apps
I came across this article on a 'qualitative study of user perceptions of mobile health apps', this study was published by BMC Public Health and I felt it was very relevant to this project. Personally I only use one health app currently which is Headspace, and my reasons for this are because it helps me in my daily life - along with this I tend to use the Health app already installed on iPhone, however I do not use this to its full potential. It is important for me to understand exactly what users want in an app, but equally as important to find out what they do not want or what frustrations they have with apps currently on the market.
Mobile apps for health exist in large numbers today, but often consumers do not continue to use them after a brief period of initial usage, are against using them at all, or are unaware that such apps even exist. This study examines and determines the design and content elements of health apps that facilitate or impede usage from the usersâ perceptive.
Currently over 97,000 health-related apps (termed as health apps hereafter) are available in the health and fitness category of the Apple app store and Google play store, with about 1000 more being created every month. In 2014, six focus groups and five individual interviews were conducted in the Midwest region of the U.S. with a mixture of 44 smartphone owners of various social economic status. The participants were asked about their general and health specific mobile app usage. They were then shown specific features of exemplar health apps and prompted to discuss their perceptions.
Among the participants, only 57% had health apps. Four types of reasons were identified by the participants explaining why they did not adopt or start to use health apps.
Barriers to Adoption of Health Apps
More than a quarter of the participants were unaware of or did not even think that health apps were available.
Participants did not feel the need to use a health app either because other tools were already available and it was not necessary to use a mobile app or they already had formed healthy habits and a tool was no longer needed
Participants did not know which app to choose or how to use it. One female college student stated that âhealth app is only developed in recent years. Consumers might not have a clear definition what good health app is. There are so many functions. It is hard for consumers to decide. They are not sure which one fits; they eventually will just give upâ.
I thought this piece of information was really interesting, my app needs to stand out amongst the others as there is a lot of competition in this type. The user needs to know that my app is something that will benefit them and fits their daily needs.
Barriers to Continued Use of Health Apps
Participants who had health apps indicated a number of barriers to their continued use. The primary reason was the required time and effort.
âEase of use. You want to get to the process as simple as possible. The app doesnât have to do everything, but you need to feel easy to useâ
âSome apps are so complicated. I delete âem, because itâs just too much, you know. So Iâm looking for something pretty straightforward. It does what you need it to do without 10 million different things to do one thing.â
Hearing what other people had to say about these health apps that are already available is very beneficial to me as due to covid I have not been able to speak to anyone other than friends and family on their opinions.
Information and Personalised Guidance
Most participants who liked having health apps stated that what they liked most was its ability to provide information, which they would not have otherwise. Some of the information might be directly provided by the app, some of the information might be user generated and shared on the app. In particular, they valued personalised and tailored information.
âWebMD app gives a lot of informationâ was something someone said which gave me a lot of confidence in my idea of having a symptom checker within my app. WebMD is an app I have downloaded and tested myself and really liked the features they included.
Most participants also liked having a tracking feature in their apps because this type of self-monitoring increases their awareness. Many participants liked sensor-based automatic tracking, such as the accelerometer, which tracks a personâs footsteps each day. In addition to the information and tracking features in health apps, many participants also liked the goal-setting feature in many apps. They believed that goal setting, especially small daily, could help them discipline themselves and slowly change their behaviours.
Many participants, including both the young and the old, female and male, high and low social economic status individuals, were reluctant to share personal information. The primary reason for not wanting to share personal information was because people considered health-related information such as exercise and dietary patterns as private matters, which did not warrant sharing with others. Another reason for not wanting to share personal information was the concern of how the information might be exploited by a third party, such as health insurance companies or advertisers.
I am now aware from these statements that I need to make my user feel a sense of trust when using my app so that they feel comfortable sharing personal details, for this reason I must be careful in my use of voice and tone of the app so that the user feels safe to share their details within the app.
This study was really helpful in giving me an insight into the perceptions of different people on their use of health apps in a wide pool of people. I have taken information from this study and ensured that I keep this in mind in the development stage of my app screens. I must keep in mind at all times who I am designing for and what their needs are.
