Care Me Too, a Mobile App for Engaging Chinese Immigrant Caregivers in Self-Care: Qualitative Usability Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Caregiving and self-care are challenging for Chinese immigrants in the U.S. due to limited accessible support and resources. Few interventions existed to assist Chinese immigrant caregivers to better perform self-care. To fill the void in the literature, the team developed a Care Me Too app for engaging Chinese immigrant caregivers in self-care and conducted a user-experience test to assess its usability and acceptability. OBJECTIVE The aims of this paper are to report the user experience testing results and develop guidelines to support mHealth app design for immigrant caregiver populations. METHODS Twenty-two Chinese caregivers participated in the study, which consisted of two parts: in-lab testing and one-week at-home testing. In-depth face-to-face interviews and follow-up phone interviews were used to test the app’s usability and acceptability and solicit participants’ feedback for app design and functions. Directed content analysis was used to analyze testing transcripts. RESULTS Participants reported uniformly positive ratings of usability and acceptability of the app and provided detailed suggestions for app improvement. We generated some mHealth app design guidelines targeting immigrant caregivers, including weighing flexibility vs. targeting majority preferences, increasing text sizes, using colors effectively, providing engaging and playful visual designs and functions, simplifying navigation, simplifying login process, improving access to and the content of help document, designing functions to cater to the population’s context, and ensuring offline access. CONCLUSIONS Culturally and linguistically appropriate mHealth apps are appealing to immigrant caregivers for health promotion.