Usability evaluation of the “Teen ‘n Fit” mobile health application: A formative study among Indonesian adolescent girls

TL;DR

This study evaluates the usability of the Teen ‘n Fit’ mobile app, designed to promote healthy behaviors among Indonesian adolescent girls, and finds it to be highly usable.

Contribution

The study introduces a modified version of the MAUQ to assess the usability of a mobile health app tailored for Indonesian adolescent girls.

Findings

The modified MAUQ showed strong reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.945.

Teen ‘n Fit’ achieved a high usability score of 6.0 out of 7.

Participants with occasional mHealth experience had higher usability scores than those with no prior use.

Abstract

Mobile Health (mHealth) Applications offer a promising approach to promote the adoption of healthy nutrition and behavior among adolescent girls. A tailored mobile app, Teen ‘n Fit, was developed to support adolescent girls in Indonesia to assess their nutritional status, physical activity, and eating behavior; as a nutrition education media; and as a reminder of iron folic acid consumption. However, it is essential to measure the app’s usability prior to the release.

This study aimed to measure the usability of a mobile application designed to promote nutrition and healthy behavior of adolescent girls by modifying the mHealth App Usability Questionnaire (MAUQ).

A cross-sectional usability study was conducted on 64 adolescent girls aged 15–18 from a public high school in Depok, Indonesia. Participants completed app-based tasks and filled out a post-task usability questionnaire. The usability questionnaire was adapted from a validated MAUQ for a standalone mHealth app. The exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the items constituting each component in the modified MAUQ. Mann-Whitney analysis was employed to analyze the difference in usability score means based on participants’ characteristics.

The modified MAUQ demonstrated strong reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.945). The app achieves a strong usability score, 6.0 ± 0.8 out of 7, with 79.7 percent of participants reporting no prior mHealth experience. The score among participants who occasionally used mHealth applications was higher (p = 0.046) than those who had never made prior use.

The findings indicate strong usability potential of Teen ‘n Fit as a digital health promotion tool for adolescent girls; however, future efforts in conducting effectiveness tests and maintaining user engagement are needed.

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