Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Mar 23, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 11, 2020
A Qualitative Content Analysis of User Perspectives of Mood-Monitoring Apps Available to Young People.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health (mHealth) apps are increasingly available and used in a clinical context to monitor young people’s mood and mental health. Despite the benefits of accessibility and cost-effectiveness, consumer engagement remains a hurdle for update and continued use. Hundreds of mood-monitoring apps are publicly available to young people on the app store; however, few studies have examined consumer perspectives of these apps. App store reviews provide a large, rich source of naturally generated, publicly available user reviews. Although commercial developers use this data to modify and improve their apps, to date there has been very little in-depth evaluation of app store user reviews within scientific research and our current understanding of what makes apps engaging and valuable to young people is limited.
Objective:
The aim of our study was to gain a better understanding of what app users consider useful to encourage frequent and prolonged use of mood monitoring apps appropriate for young people.
Methods:
A systematic approach was applied to the selection of apps and reviews. We systematically identified mood-monitoring apps (n=53) by automated API snowball sampling and data scraping methods. We only included apps appropriate for young people based on app store age categories. We subsequently downloaded all available user reviews via API methods and then retrieved a representative sub-sample (n=1,803) to conduct a manual qualitative content analysis on.
Results:
The qualitative content analysis revealed 8 main themes 1) accessibility (32.8%); 2) flexibility (20.5%); 3) technical feature (19.9%); 4) recording/representation of mood (17.8%); 5) reflecting on mood (16.1%); 6) design (12.5%) and 7) health promotion (11.6%). 8 minor themes were also identified: 1) notification/reminders; 2) recommendation; 3) developer; 4) adverts; 5) social- peer/community support; 6) gamification; 7) transparency.
Conclusions:
App store reviews are a valuable repository of user engagement feedback and provide a wealth of information about what users’ value in an app and what user needs are not being met. Users generally positively perceive mood-monitoring apps but 1 in 5 also contain a user request, identifying the need for improvement within currently available mood-monitoring apps. Users value apps that can be personalised to their needs, have a simple and intuitive design and allow accurate representation and review of complex and fluctuating moods. Clinical Trial: N/A
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