Usability Challenges for Health and Wellness Mobile Apps: Mixed-Methods Study Among mHealth Experts and Consumers

Abstract

Background: By 2019, there will be an estimated 4.68 billion mobile phone users globally. This increase comes with an unprecedented proliferation in mobile apps, a plug-and-play product positioned to improve lives in innumerable ways. Within this landscape, medical apps will see a 41% compounded annual growth rate between 2015 and 2020, but paradoxically, prevailing evidence indicates declining downloads of such apps and decreasing "stickiness" with the intended end users.

Objective: As usability is a prerequisite for success of health and wellness mobile apps, this paper aims to provide insights and suggestions for improving usability experience of the mobile health (mHealth) app by exploring the degree of alignment between mHealth insiders and consumers.

Methods: Usability-related major themes were selected from over 20 mHealth app development studies. The list of themes, grouped into 5 categories using the Nielsen usability model, was then used as a framework to identify and classify the responses from mHealth expert (insider) interviews. Responses from the qualitative phase were integrated into some questions for a quantitative consumer survey. Subsequently, categorical data from qualitative mHealth insider interviews and numerical data from a quantitative consumer survey were compared in order to identify common usability themes and areas of divergence.

Results: Of the 5 usability attributes described in Nielsen model, Satisfaction ranked as the top attribute for both mHealth insiders and consumers. Satisfaction refers to user likability, comfort, and pleasure. The consumer survey yielded 451 responses. Out of 9 mHealth insiders' top concerns, 5 were similar to those of the consumers. On the other hand, consumers did not grade themes such as Intuitiveness as important, which was deemed vital by mHealth insiders. Other concerns of the consumers include in-app charges and advertisements.

Conclusions: This study supports and contributes to the existing pool of mixed-research studies. Strengthening the connectivity between suppliers and users (through the designed research tool) will help increase uptake of mHealth apps. In a holistic manner, this will have a positive overall outcome for the mHealth app ecosystem.

Keywords: health and wellness mobile applications; health and wellness mobile applications insiders; health and wellness mobile applications users; mHealth apps; mHealth insiders; mHealth users; mobile applications.

Figure 1

Qualitative and quantitative survey process map.

Figure 2

Qualitative study of the interview questions.

Figure 3

The 4-step data analysis flow for consumer interview.

Figure 4

First observation to the 19 obtained usability themes.

Figure 5

Second observation by frequency of mention.

Figure 6

Usability overview from mHealth insiders.

Figure 7

mHealth insiders' top concerns. Asterisk for top concern indicates total mentions≥10 (average) and number of people mentions≥7 (average). mHealth: mobile health.

Figure 8

mHealth insider quotes for top concerns.

Figure 9

Sensitivity analysis for comparison of themes.

Figure 10

Number of top concerns from consumers.

Figure 11

Demographic comparisons of mHealth insiders' top concerns.

Figure 12

mHealth insider and consumer alignment study.

Figure 13

Comparison of top concerns from mHealth insiders versus Asia Pacific consumers.