RESEARCH & NOTICE

Background: Obesity is a global epidemic. Behavior change monitoring using a smartphone application (app) can support weight management in obese patients. These apps must undergo usability testing, which is an important step in mobile healthcare app development. The current study aimed to develop a mobile app for behavioral monitoring and to test its usability including technical effectiveness, user efficiency, and user satisfaction for obese adults.

Methods: Development of the Dr. Youth app components included information on behavioral monitoring indicators and their obesity subtypes. The usability of the app was tested with 50 obese adults in a university hospital. Participants were asked to complete eight tasks for evaluating the technical effectiveness of the app. The time to complete each task was measured to test user efficiency. To explore user satisfaction, each participant completed the System Usability Scale (SUS). Descriptive statistics were used to examine the mean user efficiency and SUS scores.

Results: Fifty adults (14 men and 36 women, aged 20-59 years) who are obese (body mass index ≥25 kg/m2) were recruited. The mean age of participants was 42.6 years (standard deviation [SD], 10.8 years); their mean body mass index was 29.6 kg/m2 (SD, 5.7 kg/m2). The tasks were completed with a 99% success rate. The overall mean SUS score was 76.65 (SD, 15.43).

Conclusion: The Dr. Youth app shows acceptable technical effectiveness, user efficiency, and user satisfaction. Future study is warranted to establish the app's clinical efficacy.

Keywords: Health behavior; Mobile applications; Obesity; Patient satisfaction.