"Inconsistent Performance": Understanding Concerns of Real-World Users on Smart Mobile Health Applications Through Analyzing App Reviews

TL;DR

This study analyzes 120 user reviews of smart mobile health apps to identify key user concerns, highlighting issues with accuracy, customizability, and trust, which can inform better app design.

Contribution

It provides a thematic analysis of real-world user reviews, revealing primary concerns and gaps in user discussions on privacy and fairness in smart health apps.

Findings

Accuracy, customizability, and convenience are main user concerns.

Trust issues are prevalent in user reviews.

Privacy and fairness are rarely discussed.

Abstract

While smart mobile health apps that adapt to users' progressive individual needs are proliferating, many of them struggle to fulfill their promises due to an inferior user experience. Understanding the concerns of real-world users related to those apps, and their smart components in particular, could help advance the app design to attract and retain users. In this paper, we target this issue through a preliminary thematic analysis of 120 user reviews of six smart health apps. We found that accuracy, customizability, and convenience of data input are primary concerns raised in real-world user reviews. Many concerns on the smart components are related to the trust issue of the users towards the apps. However, several important aspects such as privacy and fairness were rarely discussed in the reviews. Overall, our study provides insights that can inspire further investigations to support the design of smart mobile health apps.