Self-assess Momentary Mood in Mobile Devices: a Case Study with Mature Female Participants

TL;DR

This study explores the use of simple, user-friendly mobile interfaces for mature women to self-assess their momentary mood, aiming to support health interventions through feasible and acceptable methods.

Contribution

It introduces a straightforward app with refined mood assessment widgets, demonstrating feasibility and acceptability among mature women for momentary mood tracking.

Findings

Participants found the method feasible and acceptable.

Refined widgets reduced expressive ambiguity.

Data collection was successful over 15 days.

Abstract

Starting from the assumption that mood has a central role in domain-specific persuasion systems for well-being, the main goal of this study was to investigate the feasibility and acceptability of single-input methods to assess momentary mood as a medium for further interventions in health-related mobile apps destined for mature women. To this aim, we designed a very simple android App providing four user interfaces, each one showing one interactive widget to self-assess mood. Two widgets report a hint about the momentary mood they represent; the last two do not have the hints but were previously refined through questionnaires administered to 63 women (age 45-65) in order to reduce their expressive ambiguity. Next, fifteen women (age 45-65 years) were recruited to use the app for 15 days. Participants were polled about their mood four times a day and data were saved in a remote database. Moreover, users were asked to fill out a preliminary questionnaire, at the first access to the app, and a feedback questionnaire at the end of the testing period. Results appear to prove the feasibility and acceptability of this approach to self-assess momentary mood in the target population and provides some potential input methods to be used in this context.