mHealth Apps and Usability: Using User-Generated Content to Explore Users’ Experiences

Scholarly research in technical and professional communication (TPC) has found that user-generated content such as online product reviews can be used to help practitioners learn more about their audience in certain contexts. In this session, we present the results of a study in which we analyzed review comments for a civilian first-responder mobile health or mHealth app, PulsePoint Respond. We found that ensuring that the app works as it was designed (i.e., functional usability concerns) remained important to users. However, we also found that users frequently wanted to perform tasks that were not supported by the app, pointing to the need to better understand the audiences of mHealth tools. In our presentation, we will address this need by drawing from our analysis to propose a commenting heuristic that practitioners can use to prompt users to leave more actionable and valuable information about their experiences with mHealth and other mobile apps.