Microlearning mApp raises health competence: hybrid service design

Abstract

Work place health support interventions can help support our aging work force, with mApps offering cost-effectiveness opportunities. Previous research shows that health support apps should offer users enough newness and relevance each time they are used. Otherwise the ‘eHealth law of attrition’ applies: 90 % of users are lost prematurely. Our research study builds on this prior research with further investigation on whether a mobile health quiz provides added value for users within a hybrid service mix and whether it promotes long term health? We developed a hybrid health support intervention solution that uses a mix of electronic and physical support services for improving health behaviours, including a mobile micro-learning health quiz. This solution was evaluated in a multiple-case study at three work sites with 86 users. We find that both our mobile health quiz and the overall hybrid solution contributed to improvements in health readiness, −behaviour and -competence. Users indicated that the micro-learning health quiz courses provided new and relevant information. Relatively high utilization rates of the health quiz were observed. Participants indicated that health insights were given that directly influenced every day health perceptions, −choices, coping and goal achievement strategies, plus motivation and self-norms. This points to increased user health self-management competence. Moreover, even after 10 months they indicated to still have improved health awareness, −motivation and -behaviours (food, physical activity, mental recuperation). A design analysis was conducted regarding service mix efficacy; the mobile micro-learning health quiz helped fulfil a set of key requirements that exist for designing ICT-enabled lifestyle interventions, largely in the way it was anticipated.

Characteristics of Smartphone Applications for Nutrition Improvement in Community Settings: A Scoping Review

“…Narrative game-style applications (typically games with a character and storyline) were more appealing to adolescents than adults, and emotional and social realism were important for motivation (50,62,77,85,89). Adults and overweight populations generally valued quiz-style games if they were quick to play and included incentives such as real rewards (70,74,85). Competition, team participation, and social interaction motivated engagement with applications across all population groups (48,50,77,78,80,90,99), but negative scoring of points was not well understood by low-SES populations (77).…”

“…Field deployment (real-time use of the application by consumers in the intended setting), with or without participant observation, was the most common testing design used. This approach was taken in 3 nutritionimprovement trials (36,48,50) and 13 application-development projects (65,68,70,72,74,76,79,80,85,(88)(89)(90)92). Other common approaches were testing of application components (36,52,75,85) and focus groups (73,85,86).…”

“…Of the trials using a field deployment design and reporting the duration of user testing, 1 tested the application for less than 1 wk (88), 5 for 2-4 wk (50, 72, 74, 79, 80), 3 for 6-10 wk (48,65,76), and 2 for between 6 and 10 mo (70,90).…”

“…The most common evaluative tools used were online surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups about accessibility, usability, satisfaction, integration into daily routine, and user experience (36, 48, 65, 70, 72-77, 79, 80, 85, 86, 88-90, 92) (18 studies). During field-deployment testing, 4 studies incorporated a pre-and posttest of nutrition improvement (48,65,79,88), 3 logging of application use (links followed, button pressing, messages responded to) and (48,70,72), 2 analytics for data uptake and usage metrics (65,85), and in 1 study testers kept a diary of when and where the application was used, progress, enjoyment, and thoughts related to nutrition content (79). When testing was not completed through a field-deployment design, paper or interactive-application mock-ups on a device were always used (52,73,77,85,86) (5 studies).…”

Effectiveness of web-based personalised e‑Coaching lifestyle interventions

“…In micro-learning short snippets of information are provided, and alternated with short questions. These strategies result in greater effectiveness of e‑Coaching, due to activating intrinsic motivation and supporting self-efficacy of the user [ 27 ].…”