Abstract
Mobile based persuasive technology can help us to shape positive behaviour and induce habit cessation. This paper reports on the preliminary content analysis of the comments made by users on a set of 18 iTunes apps that were designed to attempt to reduce the over consumption of alcohol and ultimately cut down drinking. In total 204 comments were retrieved from the set of 18 applications using data generated from a custom batch script. Our main results from the content analysis show that an efficient user interface is imperative to facilitate the user acceptance of persuasive mobile systems that attempt to inhibit consumption of alcohol. Furthermore, we noted more positive comments towards apps that adopted a self control behavioural change strategy, particularly as they followed a subtle and not abrupt interaction style. We conclude our analysis by providing a list of design recommendations for mobile apps that can assist in inhibiting alcohol consumption. Our analysis indicated that customisation and the possibility of maintaining incremental milestones were amongst the more sought after app features.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abroms, L.C., Padmanabhan, N., Thaweethai, L., Phillips, T.: iphone apps for smoking cessation: a content analysis. Am. J. Prev. Med. 40(3), 279–285 (2011)
App. Store (2015). http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8739611/apple-wwdc-2015-stats-update
Bewick, B.M., Trusler, K., Barkham, M., Hill, A.J., Cahill, J., Mulhern, B.: The effectiveness of web-based interventions designed to decrease alcohol consumptiona systematic review. Prev. Med. 47(1), 17–26 (2008)
Cohn, A.M., Hunter-Reel, D., Hagman, B.T., Mitchell, J.: Promoting behavior change from alcohol use through mobile technology: the future of ecological momentary assessment. Alcohol.: Clin. Exp. Res. 35(12), 2209–2215 (2011)
Dennison, L., Morrison, L., Conway, G., Yardley, L.: Opportunities and challenges for smartphone applications in supporting health behavior change: qualitative study. J. Med. Internet Res. 15(4), e86 (2013)
Fogg, B., Cuellar, G., Danielson, D.: Motivating, influencing, and persuading users: An introduction to captology. Hum. Comput. Interact. Fundam. 9, 109–122 (2009)
Fogg, B.J.: Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do. Ubiquit. 2002(December), 5 (2002)
Fogg, B.J.: A behavior model for persuasive design. In: Proceedings of the 4th international Conference on Persuasive Technology, pp. 40. ACM (2009)
Hoon, L., Vasa, R., Schneider, J.G., Mouzakis, K.: A preliminary analysis of vocabulary in mobile app. user reviews. In: Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, OzCHI 2012, pp. 245–248. ACM, NY, USA, New York (2012)
Khalid, H., Shihab, E., Nagappan, M., Hassan, A.: What do mobile app. users complain about? a study on free ios apps (2014)
Masthoff, J., Vassileva, J.: Tutorial on personalization for behaviour change. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 439–442. ACM (2015)
McTavish, F.M., Chih, M.Y., Shah, D., Gustafson, D.H.: How patients recovering from alcoholism use a smartphone intervention. J. Dual Diagn. 8(4), 294–304 (2012)
Michie, S., Whittington, C., Hamoudi, Z., Zarnani, F., Tober, G., West, R.: Identification of behaviour change techniques to reduce excessive alcohol consumption. Addict. 107(8), 1431–1440 (2012)
Mudambi, S.M., Schuff, D.: What makes a helpful review? a study of customer reviews on amazon. com. MIS Q. 34(1), 185–200 (2010)
NHS Health Apps Library (2015). http://apps.nhs.uk/apps/alcohol/
Oinas-Kukkonen, H., Harjumaa, M.: Persuasive systems design: Key issues, process model, and system features. Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 24(1), 28 (2009)
Organization, W.H., et al.: Global status report on alcohol and health-2014. World Health Organization (2014)
Panel Mobile HCI 2015 (2015). http://mobilehci.acm.org/2015/panel.html
Toscos, T., Faber, A., An, S., Gandhi, M.P.: Chick clique: persuasive technology to motivate teenage girls to exercise. In: CHI 2006 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, pp. 1873–1878. ACM (2006)
del Valle, A.C.A., Opalach, A.: The persuasive mirror: computerized persuasion for healthy living
Wang, K.C., Hsieh, Y.H., Yen, C.H., You, C.W., Chen, Y.C., Huang, M.C., Lau, S.Y., Kao, H.L.C., Chu, H.H.: Soberdiary: A phone-based support system for assisting recovery from alcohol dependence. In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 311–314. ACM (2014)
Wolf, J.A., Moreau, J.F., Akilov, O., Patton, T., English, J.C., Ho, J., Ferris, L.K.: Diagnostic inaccuracy of smartphone applications for melanoma detection. JAMA Dermatol. 149(4), 422–426 (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mubin, O., Mahmud, A.A., Kabir, M.A. (2016). Alcohol Behaviour Change: Lessons Learned from User Reviews of iTunes Apps. In: Meschtscherjakov, A., De Ruyter, B., Fuchsberger, V., Murer, M., Tscheligi, M. (eds) Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9638. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31509-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31510-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)