Kim Sunyoung, Stanton Kaitlyn, Park Yunoh, Thomas Stephen
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, United States.
JMIR Form Res. 2022 May 23;6(5):e37118. doi: 10.2196/37118.
Indoor air quality is an important environmental factor that triggers and exacerbates asthma, the most common chronic disease in children. A mobile app to monitor indoor air quality could help occupants keep their indoor air quality clean. However, no app is available that allows children to monitor and improve their indoor air quality.
Previously, we conducted a series of user-centered design studies to identify user needs and design requirements toward creating a mobile app that helps children with asthma to engage in monitoring and improving indoor air quality as part of their asthma management. Based on the findings from these studies, we created AirBuddy, a child-friendly app that visualizes air quality indoors and outdoors.
This paper reports on the findings from a field deployment with 7 pediatric asthma patients, where we evaluated AirBuddy's usability and usefulness in real-world settings by conducting weekly semistructured interviews for 8 weeks.
All participants positively responded to the usefulness and usability of AirBuddy, which we believe is thanks to the iterative, user-centered design approach that allowed us to identify and address potential usability issues early on and throughout the design process.
This project contributes to the field of mHealth app design for children by demonstrating how a user-centered design process can lead to the development of digital devices that are more acceptable and relevant to target users' needs.
室内空气质量是引发和加剧哮喘的一个重要环境因素，哮喘是儿童中最常见的慢性病。一款监测室内空气质量的移动应用程序可以帮助居住者保持室内空气清洁。然而，目前还没有一款允许儿童监测和改善室内空气质量的应用程序。
此前，我们进行了一系列以用户为中心的设计研究，以确定创建一款移动应用程序的用户需求和设计要求，该应用程序可帮助哮喘儿童参与监测和改善室内空气质量，作为其哮喘管理的一部分。基于这些研究的结果，我们创建了AirBuddy，一款对儿童友好的应用程序，可直观显示室内和室外的空气质量。
本文报告了对7名儿科哮喘患者进行实地部署的研究结果，我们通过在8周内每周进行半结构化访谈，评估了AirBuddy在实际环境中的可用性和实用性。
所有参与者对AirBuddy的实用性和可用性都给予了积极回应，我们认为这得益于迭代的、以用户为中心的设计方法，该方法使我们能够在设计过程的早期及整个过程中识别并解决潜在的可用性问题。
该项目通过展示以用户为中心的设计过程如何能够开发出更符合目标用户需求且更易被接受的数字设备，为儿童移动健康应用程序设计领域做出了贡献。
