Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Mar 4, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 4, 2019 - Mar 19, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 28, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Exploring User Needs and Preferences for Mobile Apps for Sleep Disturbance: Mixed Methods Study
Background:
Mobile health (mHealth) apps demonstrate promise for improving sleep at scale. End-user engagement is a prerequisite for sustained use and effectiveness.
Objective:
We assessed the needs and preferences of those with poor sleep and insomnia to inform the development of an engaging sleep app.
Methods:
We triangulated results from qualitative (focus groups and app reviews) and quantitative (online survey) approaches. A total of 2 focus groups were conducted (N=9). An online survey tested themes identified from the focus groups against a larger population (N=167). In addition, we analyzed 434 user reviews of 6 mobile apps available on app stores.
Results:
Common focus group themes included the need to account for diverse sleep phenotypes with an adaptive and tailored program, key app features (alarms and sleep diaries), the complex yet condescending nature of existing resources, providing rationale for information requested, and cost as a motivator. Most survey participants (156/167, 93%) would try an evidence-based sleep app. The most important app features reported were sleep diaries (148/167, 88%), sharing sleep data with a doctor (116/167, 70%), and lifestyle tracking (107/167, 64%). App reviews highlighted the alarm as the most salient app feature (43/122, 35%) and data synchronization with a wearable device (WD) as the most commonly mentioned functionality (40/135, 30%).
Conclusions:
This co-design process involving end users through 3 methods consistently highlighted sleep tracking (through a diary and WD), alarms, and personalization as vital for engagement, although their implementation was commonly criticized in review. Engagement is negatively affected by poorly designed features, bugs, and didactic information which must be addressed. Other needs depend upon the type of user, for example, those with severe insomnia.
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.