Dalhousie University, Canada; King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia.
Dalhousie University, Canada.
Health Informatics J. 2020 Sep;26(3):2042-2066. doi: 10.1177/1460458219896492. Epub 2020 Jan 10.
Mental health applications hold great promise as interventions for addressing common mental issues. Although many people with mental health issues use mobile app interventions, their adherence level remains low. Low engagement affects the effectiveness of mobile interventions. However, there is still a dearth of research to explain the reasons for low engagement. User experience and usability are two factors that determine the adoption and usage of apps. Analyzing user reviews of mobile apps for mental health issues reveals user experience and what features users liked and disliked in the apps and hence informs future app design and refinements. This research aims to analyze user reviews of publicly available mental health applications to uncover their strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, hence revealing why users are likely to cease using these applications. We mined reviews of 106 mental health apps retrieved from Apple's App Store and Google Play and employed thematic analysis on 13,549 reviews. The review analysis shows that users placed more emphasis on the user interface and the user-friendliness of the app. Users also appreciated apps that present them with a variety of options, functionalities, and content that they can choose. Again, apps that offer adaptive functionalities that allow users to adapt some app features also received high ratings. In contrast, poor usability emerged as the most common reason for abandoning mental health apps. Other pitfalls include lack of a content variety, lack of personalization, lack of customer service and trust, and security and privacy issues.
心理健康应用程序作为解决常见心理问题的干预措施具有很大的潜力。尽管许多有心理健康问题的人使用移动应用程序干预,但他们的坚持程度仍然很低。低参与度会影响移动干预的效果。然而,仍然缺乏研究来解释低参与度的原因。用户体验和可用性是决定应用程序采用和使用的两个因素。分析移动心理健康应用程序的用户评论可以揭示用户体验以及用户对应用程序中喜欢和不喜欢的功能,从而为未来的应用程序设计和改进提供信息。本研究旨在分析公开可用的心理健康应用程序的用户评论,以揭示其优势、劣势和差距,从而揭示用户为什么可能停止使用这些应用程序。我们从苹果的 App Store 和谷歌 Play 上检索了 106 种心理健康应用程序的评论,并对 13549 条评论进行了主题分析。评论分析表明,用户更注重应用程序的用户界面和易用性。用户还欣赏为他们提供各种选择、功能和内容的应用程序,他们可以从中进行选择。再次,提供自适应功能的应用程序允许用户适应一些应用程序功能,也获得了很高的评价。相比之下,较差的可用性是放弃心理健康应用程序的最常见原因。其他缺陷包括缺乏内容多样性、缺乏个性化、缺乏客户服务和信任以及安全和隐私问题。
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