App chronic disease checklist: Protocol to evaluate mobile apps for chronic disease self-management

Background: The availability of mobile health apps for self-care continues to increase. While little evidence of their clinical impact has been published, there is general agreement among health authorities and authors that consumers’ use of health apps assist in self-management and potentially clinical decision making. A consumer’s sustained engagement with a health app is dependent on the usability and functionality of the app. While numerous studies have attempted to evaluate health apps, there is a paucity of published methods that adequately recognize client experiences in the academic evaluation of apps for chronic conditions. Objective: This paper reports (1) a protocol to shortlist health apps for academic evaluation, (2) synthesis of a checklist to screen health apps for quality and reliability, and (3) a proposed method to theoretically evaluate usability of health apps, with a view towards identifying one or more apps suitable for clinical assessment. Methods: A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram was developed to guide the selection of the apps to be assessed. The screening checklist was thematically synthesized with reference to recurring constructs in published checklists and related materials for the assessment of health apps. The checklist was evaluated by the authors for face and construct validity. The proposed method for evaluation of health apps required the design of procedures for raters of apps, dummy data entry to test the apps, and analysis of raters’ scores. Results: The PRISMA flow diagram comprises 5 steps: filtering of duplicate apps; eliminating non-English apps; removing apps requiring purchase, filtering apps not updated within the past year; and separation of apps into their core functionality. The screening checklist to evaluate the selected apps was named the App Chronic Disease Checklist, and comprises 4 sections with 6 questions in each section. The validity check verified classification of, and ambiguity in, wording of questions within constructs. The proposed method to evaluate shortlisted and downloaded apps comprises instructions to attempt set-up of a dummy user profile, and dummy data entry to represent in-range and out-of-range clinical measures simulating a range of user behaviors. A minimum score of 80% by consensus (using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient) between raters is proposed to identify apps suitable for clinical trials. onclusions: The flow diagram allows researchers to shortlist health apps that are potentially suitable for formal evaluation. The evaluation checklist enables quantitative comparison of shortlisted apps based on constructs reported in the literature. The use of multiple raters, and comparison of their scores, is proposed to manage inherent subjectivity in assessing user experiences. Initial trial of the combined protocol is planned for apps pertaining to the self-monitoring of asthma; these results will be reported elsewhere

Gamification techniques for raising cyber security awareness

Due to the prevalence of online services in modern society, such as internet banking and social media, it is important for users to have an understanding of basic security measures in order to keep themselves safe online. However, users often do not know how to make their online interactions secure, which demonstrates an educational need in this area. Gamification has grown in popularity in recent years and has been used to teach people about a range of subjects. This paper presents an exploratory study investigating the use of gamification techniques to educate average users about password security, with the aim of raising overall security awareness. To explore the impact of such techniques, a role-playing quiz application (RPG) was developed for the Android platform to educate users about password security. Results gained from the work highlightedthat users enjoyed learning via the use of the password application, and felt they benefitted from the inclusion of gamification techniques. Future work seeks to expand the prototype into a full solution, covering a range of security awareness issues

Goal models for acceptance requirements analysis and gamification design.

The success of software systems highly depends on user engagement. Thus, to deliver engaging systems, software has to be designed carefully taking into account Acceptance Requirements, such as '70% of users will use the system', and the psychological factors that could influence users to use the system. Analysis can then consider mechanisms that affect these factors, such as Gamification (making a game out of system use), advertising, incentives and more. We propose a Systematic Acceptance Requirements Analysis Framework based on Gamification for supporting the requirements engineer in analyzing and designing engaging software systems. Our framework, named Agon, encompasses both a methodology and a meta-model capturing acceptance and gamification knowledge. In this paper, we describe the Agon Meta-Model and provide examples from the gamification of a decision-making platform in the context of a European Project

Applying acceptance requirements to requirements modeling tools via gamification: a case study on privacy and security.

Requirements elicitation, analysis and modeling are critical activities for software success. However, software systems are increasingly complex, harder to develop due to an ever-growing number of requirements from numerous and heterogeneous stakeholders, concerning dozens of requirements types, from functional to qualitative, including adaptation, security and privacy, ethical, acceptance and more. In such settings, requirements engineers need support concerning such increasingly complex activities, and Requirements Engineering (RE) modeling tools have been developed for this. However, such tools, although effective, are complex, time-consuming and requiring steep learning curves. The consequent lack of acceptance and abandonment in using such tools, by engineers, paves the way to the application of RE techniques in a more error-prone, low-quality way, increasing the possibility to have failures in software systems delivered. In this paper, we identify main areas of lack of acceptance, affecting RE engineers, for such tools, and propose an approach for making modeling tools more effective in engaging the engineer in performing RE in a tool-based way, receiving adequate feedback and staying motivated to use modeling tools. This is accomplished by performing acceptance requirements analysis (through the Agon Framework) and using gamification to increase the engagement of engineers during the usage of RE modeling tools. Towards this end, we performed a case study, within the VisiOn European Project, for enhancing a tool for modeling privacy and security requirements. Our case study provides preliminary evidence that our approach supports in making RE modeling tools more engaging from the engineer perspective

Tourists as Mobile Gamers: Gamification for Tourism Marketing

Gaming as a cutting-edge concept has recently been used by some innovative tourism sectors as a marketing tool and as a method of deeper engagement with visitors. This research aims to explore the gamification trend and its potential for experience development and tourism marketing. Using a focus group, this paper discusses gaming and tourism, and explores what drives tourists to play games. The results suggest tourists’ game playing motivation is multidimensional. Players tend to start with purposive information seeking, then move on to an intrinsic stimulation. Socialization is also an important dimension. The research demonstrates several implications for tourism marketing

Training to self-care: fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer

In this article, we provide an account of Fitbit, a wearable sensor device, using two complementary analytical approaches: auto-ethnography and media analysis. Drawing on the concept of biopedagogy, which describes the processes of learning and training bodies how to live, we focus on how users learn to self-care with wearable technologies through a series of micropractices that involve processes of mediation and the sharing of their own data via social networking. Our discussion is oriented towards four areas of analysis: data subjectivity and sociality; making meaning; time and productivity and brand identity. We articulate how these micropractices of knowing one’s body regulate the contemporary ‘fit’ and healthy subject, and mediate expertise about health, behaviour and data subjectivity

New Technologies’ Promise to the Self and the Becoming of the Sacred: Insights from Georges Bataille’s Concept of Transgression

This article draws on Georges Bataille’s concept of transgression, a key element in Bataille’s theory of the sacred, to highlight structural implications of the way the self-empowerment ethos of new technologies suffuses the digital tracking culture. Pointing to the original conceptual stance of transgression, worked out against prohibition, I first argue that, beyond a critique of new technologies’ promise of self-empowerment as coming at the expense of an acknowledgement of the ultimate taboo—death—is the problem of the sanitizing of the tension between the crossing of the line of the symbolic taboo and prohibition; this undermines a “libidinal investment” towards the sacred, which is central in Bataille’s theory. Second, focussing on “eroticism”, since this embodies the emancipative potential of the Bataillean sacred, I argue that while a fear of eroticism marks out the digital technological realm, this is covered up by the blurring of boundaries between pleasure, fun and sex(iness) that currently governs our experience with technological devices

Overcoming the novelty effect in online gamified learning systems: an empirical evaluation of student engagement and performance

Learners in the Higher Education context who engage with computer-based gamified learning systems often experience the novelty effect: a pattern of high activity during the gamified system’s introduction followed by a drop in activity a few weeks later, once its novelty has worn off. We applied a two-tiered motivational, online gamified learning system over two years to a total number of 333 students. In a mixed methods research design, we used three-years’ worth of longitudinal data (333 students for the treatment group and 175 in the control group) to assess students’ engagement and performance in that period. Quantitative results established that students engaged and performed better in the gamified condition vis-à-vis the non- gamified. Furthermore, students exhibited higher levels of engagement in the second year compared to the first year of the gamified condition. Our qualitative data suggests that students in the second year of the gamified delivery exhibited sustained engagement, overcoming the novelty effect. Thus, our main contribution is in suggesting ways of making the engagement meaningful and useful for the students thus sustaining their engagement with computer-based gamified learning systems and overcoming the novelty effect