Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Nov 22, 2018
Date Accepted: Apr 5, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A user-centered design approach to designing a mobile health ("mHealth") app for colorectal cancer screening
ABSTRACT
Background:
Patients are increasingly using mobile health applications (“apps”) to monitor their health and educate themselves about medical issues. Despite the increasing popularity of such apps, poor design and usability often lead to suboptimal continue use of these apps, and subsequently to poor adherence to the behavior changes at which they are aimed. One solution to these design problems is for app developers to use user-centered design (UCD) principles to consider the context and needs of users during the development process.
Objective:
This paper presents a case study on the design and development process for an mHealth app which uses virtual human technology (VHT) to encourage colorectal cancer (CRC) screening among patients over age 50.
Methods:
We first provide an overview of project and discuss its utilization of VHT. We then review UCD principles and how they can be incorporated into the development of health apps. We describe how we used UCD processes during the app’s development. We then discuss the unique roles played by communications researchers, computer scientists, clinicians, and community participants in creating an mHealth app that is credible, usable, effective, and accessible to its target audience.
Results:
The principles of user-centered design were woven throughout the project development, with researchers collecting feedback from patients and providers at all stages and using that feedback to improve the credibility, usability, effectiveness, and accessibility of the mHealth app. The app was designed in an iterative process, which encouraged feedback and improvement of the app and allowed teams from different fields to revisit topics and troubleshoot problems.
Conclusions:
Implementing a user-centered design process contributed to an app which not only reflected cross-disciplinary expertise but reflects the needs, wants, and concerns of patients.