Development and Patient User Experience Evaluation of an mHealth Informational App for Osteoporosis

This mixed-methods study details the development, usability testing, and user experience evaluation of an informational mHealth app for older women who are considering diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of osteoporosis. Developers used heuristics from Universal Design theory adapted for older users. Formative usability testing measured 16 functional, informational, and navigational tasks. Data included transcripts of audio recordings, observer notes from video recordings, task completion times, and the results of a post-testing participant survey that evaluated user experience for app functions and information content. Participants interacted with the app in productive ways and with relative ease. The study also identified several app- and context-specific challenges that designers will address in future iterations of the tool. Researchers who are developing other mHealth products may benefit from using this study’s methodological framework, which includes both qualitative and quantitative results.