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A Survey of Notification Designs in Commercial mHealth Apps

Published: 08 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) apps can support users’ behavioral changes towards healthier habits (e.g., increasing activity) through goal setting, self-monitoring, and notifications. In particular, mHealth app notifications can aid in behavioral change through increasing user app engagement and adherence to health objectives. Previous studies have established empirically-derived notification design recommendations; however, prior work has shown that few mHealth apps are grounded in advised health behavior theories. Therefore, we wanted to examine if there was also a gap between recommendations and practice for mHealth notifications. We surveyed 50 mHealth apps and found a disconnect in several areas (e.g., tailoring, interactivity). Our findings show that mHealth apps can be improved to further support users’ health goals. We discuss open research questions in the context of mHealth notifications.

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References

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2021
2965 pages
ISBN:9781450380959
DOI:10.1145/3411763
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Published: 08 May 2021

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  1. alerts
  2. mHealth
  3. mobile health
  4. notifications

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Time of Day Preferences and Daily Temporal Consistency for Predicting the Sustained Use of a Commercial Meditation App: Longitudinal Observational StudyJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/4248225(e42482)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2023
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