Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Oct 1, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 6, 2018 - Nov 13, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 22, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The co-creative development of the QoL-ME: a visual and personalised quality of life assessment app for people with severe mental health problems
ABSTRACT
Background:
Quality of Life (QoL) is a prominent outcome measure in mental health. Conventional methods for QoL assessment, however, rely heavily on languageâ€based communication, and may therefore not be optimal for all individuals with severe mental health problems. Additionally, QoL assessment is usually based on a fixed number of life domains. This approach conflicts with the notion that QoL is influenced by individual values and preferences. A digital assessment app facilitates both the accessibility and personalisation of QoL assessment and may therefore help to further advance QoL assessment among individuals with severe mental health problems.
Objective:
This study focuses on the development of an innovative, visual and personalised QoL assessment app for people with severe mental health problems: the QoL-ME.
Methods:
A group of 59 participants contributed to the six iterations of the co-creative development of the QoL-ME. In the brainstorm stage, consisting of the first iteration, participants’ previous experiences with questionnaires and smartphone applications (apps) were explored. Participants gave their feedback on initial designs and wireframes in the second to fourth iterations that made up the design stage. In the usability stage that comprised the final two iterations, the usability of the QoL-ME was evaluated.
Results:
In the brainstorm stage, participants stressed the importance of privacy and data security, and of receiving feedback when answering questionnaires. Participants in the design stage indicated a preference for paging over scrolling, linear navigation, a clean and minimalist layout, the use of touchscreen functionality in various modes of interaction, and the use of Visual Analogue Scales (VAS). The usability evaluation in the usability stage revealed good to excellent usability.
Conclusions:
The co-creative development of the QoL-ME resulted in an app that corresponds to the preferences of participants and that has strong usability. Further research is needed to evaluate the psychometric quality of the QoL-ME, and to investigate its usefulness in practice. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.