Smartphone Apps for Food Purchase Choices: Scoping Review of Designs, Opportunities, and Challenges

Background: Smartphone apps can aid consumers in making healthier and more sustainable food purchases. However, there is still a limited understanding of the different app design approaches and their impact on food purchase choices. An overview of existing food purchase choice apps and an understanding of common challenges can help speed up effective future developments.Objective: We examined the academic literature on food purchase choice apps and provided an overview of the design characteristics, opportunities, and challenges for effective implementation. Thus, we contribute to an understanding of how technologies can effectively improve food purchase choice behavior and provide recommendations for future design efforts.Methods: Following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines, we considered peer-reviewed literature on food purchase choice apps within IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. We inductively coded and summarized design characteristics. Opportunities and challenges were addressed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. From the quantitative perspective, we coded and summarized outcomes of comparative evaluation trials. From the qualitative perspective, we performed a qualitative content analysis of commonly discussed opportunities and challenges.Results: We retrieved 55 articles, identified 46 unique apps, and grouped them into 5 distinct app types. Each app type supports a specific purchase choice stage and shares a common functional design. Most apps support the product selection stage (selection apps; 27/46, 59%), commonly by scanning the barcode and displaying a nutritional rating. In total, 73% (8/11) of the evaluation trials reported significant findings and indicated the potential of food purchase choice apps to support behavior change. However, relatively few evaluations covered the selection app type, and these studies showed mixed results. We found a common opportunity in apps contributing to learning (knowledge gain), whereas infrequent engagement presents a common challenge. The latter was associated with perceived burden of use, trust, and performance as well as with learning. In addition, there were technical challenges in establishing comprehensive product information databases or achieving performance accuracy with advanced identification methods such as image recognition.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that designs of food purchase choice apps do not encourage repeated use or long-term adoption, compromising the effectiveness of behavior change through nudging. However, we found that smartphone apps can enhance learning, which plays an important role in behavior change. Compared with nudging as a mechanism for behavior change, this mechanism is less dependent on continued use. We argue that designs that optimize for learning within each interaction have a better chance of achieving behavior change. This review concludes with design recommendations, suggesting that food purchase choice app designers anticipate the possibility of early abandonment as part of their design process and design apps that optimize the learning experience

Integration of Assistive Technologies into 3D Simulations: Exploratory Studies

Virtual worlds and environments have many purposes, ranging from games to scientific research. However, universal accessibility features in such virtual environments are limited. As the impairment prevalence rate increases yearly, so does the research interests in the field of assistive technologies. This work introduces research in assistive technologies and presents three software developments that explore the integration of assistive technologies within virtual environments, with a strong focus on Brain-Computer Interfaces. An accessible gaming system, a hands-free navigation software system, and a Brain-Computer Interaction plugin have been developed to study the capabilities of accessibility features within virtual 3D environments. Details of the specification, design, and implementation of these software applications are presented in the thesis. Observations and preliminary results as well as directions of future work are also included

Human-powered smartphone assistance for blind people

Mobile devices are fundamental tools for inclusion and independence. Yet, there are still many open research issues in smartphone accessibility for blind people (Grussenmeyer and Folmer 2017). Currently, learning how to use a smartphone is non-trivial, especially when we consider that the need to learn new apps and accommodate to updates never ceases. When first transitioning from a basic feature-phone, people have to adapt to new paradigms of interaction. Where feature phones had a finite set of applications and functions, users can extend the possible functions and uses of a smartphone by installing new 3rd party applications. Moreover, the interconnectivity of these applications means that users can explore a seemingly endless set of workflows across applications. To that end, the fragmented nature of development on these devices results in users needing to create different mental models for each application. These characteristics make smartphone adoption a demanding task, as we found from our eight-week longitudinal study on smartphone adoption by blind people. We conducted multiple studies to characterize the smartphone challenges that blind people face, and found people often require synchronous, co-located assistance from family, peers, friends, and even strangers to overcome the different barriers they face. However, help is not always available, especially when we consider the disparity in each barrier, individual support network and current location. In this dissertation we investigated if and how in-context human-powered solutions can be leveraged to improve current smartphone accessibility and ease of use. Building on a comprehensive knowledge of the smartphone challenges faced and coping mechanisms employed by blind people, we explored how human-powered assistive technologies can facilitate use. The thesis of this dissertation is: Human-powered smartphone assistance by non-experts is effective and impacts perceptions of self-efficacy

A conceptual multi-model HCI model for the blind

The ability for blind people to read and write Braille aids literacy development. A good level of literacy enables a person to function well in society in terms of employment, education and daily living. The learning of Braille has traditionally been done with hard copy Braille produced by manual and more recently electronic Braille writers and printers. Curtin University is developing an electronic Braille writer and the research on an interface for Braille keyboard devices, presented in this thesis, forms part of the Curtin University Brailler project.The Design Science approach was the research method chosen for this research because of the flexibility of the approach and because it focuses upon the building of artefacts and theory development. The small sample size meant that both individual interviews and a focus group were employed to gather relevant data from respondents. The literature review covers a variety of areas related to computer interfaces and Braille keyboard devices. A key finding is that the interaction paradigm for Braille keyboard devices needs to differ to interfaces for sighted individuals because of the audio, tactile and serial nature of the information gathering strategies employed by blind people as compared with the visual and spatial information gathering strategies employed by sighted individuals. In terms of usability attributes designed to evaluate the interface consistency was found to be a key factor because of its importance to learning and memory retention.However, two main functions carried out on a computer system are navigating and editing. Thus the model of interface for Braille keyboard devices presented in this thesis focuses upon navigation support and editing support.Feedback was sort from by interviews with individuals and a focus group. Individual interviews were conducted face to face and via the telephone and the focus group was conducted via Skype conference call to enable participants from all over the world to provide feedback on the model.The model was evaluated using usability attributes. Usability was important to the respondents, in particular consistency, learnability, simplicity and ease of use were important. The concept of rich navigation and infinitely definable key maps were understood by respondents and supported. Braille output is essential including the ability to show formatting information in Braille.The limitations of the research included the few respondents to the interviews and the choice to focus upon a theoretical model rather than implementing the model on an actual device. Future research opportunities include implementing the interface concepts from the model on to touch screen devices to aid further development of the interface and implementing the interface on a physical device such as the Curtin University Brailler

EXPLORING THE ACCESSIBILITY OF HOME-BASED, VOICE-CONTROLLED INTELLIGENT PERSONAL ASSISTANTS

From an accessibility perspective, home-based, voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have the potential to greatly expand speech interaction beyond dictation and screenreader output. This research examines the accessibility of off-the-shelf IPAs (e.g., Amazon Echo) by conducting two exploratory studies. To explore the use of IPAs by people with disabilities, we analyzed 346 Amazon Echo reviews mentioning users with disabilities, followed by interviews with 16 visually impaired IPA users. Although some accessibility challenges exist, individuals with a range of disabilities are using IPAs, including unexpected uses such as speech therapy and memory aids. The second study involved a three-week deployment of Echo Dot, a popular IPA, with five older adults who use technology infrequently. Findings indicate preferences for using IPAs over traditional computing devices. We identify design implications to improve IPAs for this population. Both studies highlight issues of discoverability and the need for feature-rich voice-based applications. The findings of this research can inform future work on accessible voice-based IPAs

AN INVESTIGATION OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A MOBILE HEALTH SYSTEM FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DEXTERITY IMPAIRMENTS

Mobile health (mHealth) systems have a great potential to empower individuals with chronic disease and disabilities to engage in preventive self-care. Before persons with disabilities can harness the potential of mhealth, the accessibility of mhealth systems should be addressed. An innovative mHealth system called iMHere (Internet Mobile Health and Rehabilitation) has been developed at the University of Pittsburgh to support self-care and adherence to self-care regimens for individuals with spina bifida and other complex conditions who are vulnerable to secondary complications. However, the existing design of the iMHere system was not designed to accommodate users with dexterity impairments. The overall goal of this research is to design and transform an existing mHealth system to make it more usable and accessible for users with dexterity impairment. To achieve this goal, three studies were conducted: Evaluation, Design and Development, and Validation of personalization and accessibility design in mobile health apps. The first study (Evaluation) was aimed to identify the barriers of the original iMHere apps to accessibility, and to explore the necessary features that may improve users’ experiences. The second study (Design and Development) was aimed to develop innovative designs to improve the accessibility and usability of the mHealth system. The third study (Validation) was aimed to evaluate the users’ acceptance of and preferences regarding the personalized and accessible mHealth services on a smartphone. The accessible design and development model that is presented in this dissertation incorporates user-interface components related to physical presentation (widgets, visual cues) and navigation (activity flow and layout order). Personalization that provides the ability for a user to modify the appearance of content, such as the size of the icons and the color of text, are proposed as an optimal solution to address potential issues and barriers to accessibility. The importance of personalization strategies for accessibility is also discussed