User Experience of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Apps for Depression: An Analysis of App Functionality and User Reviews

Stawarz, Katarzyna; Preist, Chris; Tallon, Debbie; Wiles, Nicola; Coyle, David

doi:10.2196/10120

Cited by 180 publications

(185 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Identifying Potentially Relevant Apps and Extensions. Following similar reviews [166,179], we then manually screened the titles and short descriptions (if available; otherwise the first paragraphs of the full description). We included apps and extensions explicitly designed to help people self-regulate their digital device use, while excluding tools intended for general productivity, self-regulation in other domains than digital device use, or which were not available in English (for detailed exclusion criteria, see osf.io/zyj4h).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to Digital Self-Control Tools

Lyngs¹

2019

Preprint

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Many people struggle to control their use of digital devices. However, our understanding of the design mechanisms that support user self-control remains limited. In this paper, we make two contributions to HCI research in this space: first, we analyse 367 apps and browser extensions from the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores to identify common core design features and intervention strategies afforded by current tools for digital self-control. Second, we adapt and apply an integrative dual systems model of self-regulation as a framework for organising and evaluating the design features found. Our analysis aims to help the design of better tools in two ways: (i) by identifying how, through a well-established model of self-regulation, current tools overlap and differ in how they support self-control; and (ii) by using the model to reveal underexplored cognitive mechanisms that could aid the design of new tools.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to Digital Self-Control Tools

Lyngs¹

2019

Preprint

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“…However, only a handful of studies have analyzed mHealth app reviews. These investigations have tended to assess app content quality for specific disorders [ 35 ], app functionality and user experience of a specific intervention [ 36 ], or apps targeting medication adherence [ 37 ]. Consumer perspectives of apps for bipolar disorder [ 35 ] found mostly positive feedback but also a large number of requests for desired functions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, users often did not consider the evidence base or clinical effectiveness of the app. User experience of cognitive behavioral therapy apps for depression [ 36 ] found that users valued the app in supporting their mental well-being and used the app as an adjunct to treatment. Concerns were also highlighted, particularly surrounding the importance of privacy, security, and trust.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

User Perspectives of Mood-Monitoring Apps Available to Young People: Qualitative Content Analysis

Widnall¹,

Grant²,

Wang³

et al. 2020

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background Mobile health apps are increasingly available and used in a clinical context to monitor young people’s mood and mental health. Despite the benefits of accessibility and cost-effectiveness, consumer engagement remains a hurdle for uptake and continued use. Hundreds of mood-monitoring apps are publicly available to young people on app stores; however, few studies have examined consumer perspectives. App store reviews held on Google and Apple platforms provide a large, rich source of naturally generated, publicly available user reviews. Although commercial developers use these data to modify and improve their apps, to date, there has been very little in-depth evaluation of app store user reviews within scientific research, and our current understanding of what makes apps engaging and valuable to young people is limited. Objective This study aims to gain a better understanding of what app users consider useful to encourage frequent and prolonged use of mood-monitoring apps appropriate for young people. Methods A systematic approach was applied to the selection of apps and reviews. We identified mood-monitoring apps (n=53) by a combination of automated application programming interface (API) methods. We only included apps appropriate for young people based on app store age categories (apps available to those younger than 18 years). We subsequently downloaded all available user reviews via API data scraping methods and selected a representative subsample of reviews (n=1803) for manual qualitative content analysis. Results The qualitative content analysis revealed 8 main themes: accessibility (34%), flexibility (21%), recording and representation of mood (18%), user requests (17%), reflecting on mood (16%), technical features (16%), design (13%), and health promotion (11%). A total of 6 minor themes were also identified: notification and reminders; recommendation; privacy, security, and transparency; developer; adverts; and social/community. Conclusions Users value mood-monitoring apps that can be personalized to their needs, have a simple and intuitive design, and allow accurate representation and review of complex and fluctuating moods. App store reviews are a valuable repository of user engagement feedback and provide a wealth of information about what users value in an app and what user needs are not being met. Users perceive mood-monitoring apps positively, but over 20% of reviews identified the need for improvement.

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“…Following similar reviews, we coded functionality based on the descriptions, screenshots, and videos available on a tool's store page [cf. 166,[177][178][179]. We iteratively developed a coding sheet of feature categories [cf.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Control in Cyberspace

Lyngs

Lukoff

Slovák

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

104

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Many people struggle to control their use of digital devices. However, our understanding of the design mechanisms that support user self-control remains limited. In this paper, we make two contributions to HCI research in this space: first, we analyse 367 apps and browser extensions from the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores to identify common core design features and intervention strategies afforded by current tools for digital self-control. Second, we adapt and apply an integrative dual systems model of self-regulation as a framework for organising and evaluating the design features found. Our analysis aims to help the design of better tools in two ways: (i) by identifying how, through a wellestablished model of self-regulation, current tools overlap and differ in how they support self-control; and (ii) by using the model to reveal underexplored cognitive mechanisms that could aid the design of new tools. * Also with

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User Experience of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Apps for Depression: An Analysis of App Functionality and User Reviews

Cited by 180 publications

References 53 publications

Self-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to Digital Self-Control Tools

Self-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to Digital Self-Control Tools

User Perspectives of Mood-Monitoring Apps Available to Young People: Qualitative Content Analysis

Self-Control in Cyberspace

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