Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Aug 9, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 8, 2021 - Oct 3, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 27, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
User Experience, Engagement, and Popularity in Mental Health Apps: Secondary Analysis of App Analytics and Expert App Reviews
ABSTRACT
Background:
User experience and engagement are critical to mental health apps’ abilities to support users. However, limited work has examined the relationship between user experience, engagement, and app popularity. Given that apps vary immensely in their popularity, understanding why some mental health apps are more appealing or engaging to users can inform efforts to develop better apps.
Objective:
We aimed to examine relationships between user experience, engagement, and popularity. To do so, we examined links between subjective measures of user experience and objective measures of app popularity and engagement.
Methods:
We conducted a pre-registered secondary data analysis in a sample of 56 mental health apps. To measure user experience, we used expert ratings on the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) and consumer ratings from the Apple app store and Google Play app store. To measure engagement, we acquired estimates of measures of monthly active users (MAU) and user retention. To measure app popularity, we used download count, total app revenue, and MAU again.
Results:
MARS total score was significantly and positively correlated with app-level revenue (T=0.30, P=.002), MAU (T= 0.39, P<.001), and downloads (T=0.41, P<.001). However, neither the MARS total score nor any of its subscales (Engagement, Functionality, Aesthetics, nor Information) were significantly correlated with user retention 1, 7, or 30 days after downloading. Also, MARS total score was not significantly correlated with app store rating.
Conclusions:
Popular mental health apps receive better ratings of user experience than less popular ones. However, user experience (as operationalized by the MARS) does not predict sustained engagement with mental health apps. Collaboration between industry and academic teams may better advance a science of engagement and help to make mental health apps more effective and appealing.
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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.