JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

MICCO (Mobile Integrated Care for Childhood Obesity) is a multi-component intervention to promote healthy lifestyles among young children with obesity from rural communities that was developed in collaboration with community, parent, and healthcare partners. It includes community programming to promote healthy lifestyles and address social needs and healthcare visits with an interdisciplinary team. A digital mobile health (mHealth) platform – the Healthy Lifestyle dashboard – was designed as a self-management tool for families to use as part of MICCO.

Objective:

This study aimed to test and refine the English and Spanish language versions of the Healthy Lifestyle dashboard through usability testing with a diverse group of parents.

Methods:

Seven mothers of children with obesity from rural communities (average age of 39 years; four Spanish-speaking and three English-speaking) provided feedback on a prototype of the dashboard and indicated their preferences in a three-phased approach. Participants verbalized their thoughts while using the prototype to complete four tasks. Qualitative and quantitative data regarding usability, acceptability, and understandability were analyzed.

Results:

The dashboard was noted to be acceptable by 100% of the participants. Overall, participants found the dashboard easy to navigate and found the resources, notifications, and ability to communicate with the healthcare team to be especially helpful. However, Spanish-speaking participants identified challenges related to numeracy and literacy, which informed iterative refinements to make the dashboard clearer and more literacy-sensitive.

Conclusions:

Conducting usability testing with key demographic populations, especially Spanish-speaking populations, was important to developing a mHealth intervention that is user-friendly, culturally relevant, and literacy-sensitive.