Alliance Manchester Business School, Manchester, United Kingdom.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2019 Jan 30;7(1):e12160. doi: 10.2196/12160.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
到 2019 年，全球预计将拥有 46.8 亿手机用户。随着移动应用程序的空前普及，这种增长成为了一种即插即用的产品，有望以无数种方式改善生活。在这种背景下，医疗应用程序在 2015 年至 2020 年间的复合年增长率将达到 41%，但矛盾的是，现有证据表明此类应用程序的下载量正在下降，目标最终用户的粘性也在降低。
由于可用性是健康和保健移动应用程序成功的前提，因此本文旨在通过探索移动健康（mHealth）内部人士和消费者之间的一致性程度，为改善移动健康应用程序的可用性体验提供见解和建议。
从 20 多项移动健康应用程序开发研究中选择了与可用性相关的主要主题。然后，将这些主题列表按照尼尔森可用性模型分为 5 类，作为框架来识别和分类移动健康专家（内部人士）访谈的回复。定性阶段的回复被整合到一些针对消费者的定量调查问题中。随后，将定性的移动健康内部人士访谈的分类数据和定量的消费者调查的数值数据进行比较，以确定共同的可用性主题和分歧领域。
在尼尔森模型描述的 5 个可用性属性中，满意度被评为内部人士和消费者的首要属性。满意度是指用户的喜爱程度、舒适度和愉悦感。消费者调查共收到 451 份回复。在 9 个移动健康内部人士最关心的问题中，有 5 个与消费者的问题相似。另一方面，消费者并不认为直观性等主题很重要，而移动健康内部人士则认为这很重要。消费者的其他关注点包括应用内收费和广告。
本研究支持并补充了现有的混合研究。通过设计研究工具加强供应商和用户之间的联系，将有助于提高移动健康应用程序的使用率。从整体上看，这将对移动健康应用程序生态系统产生积极的总体影响。
