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The relationship between users’ technology approaches and experiences in a child development mobile application

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Abstract

Health self-monitoring information and communication technologies (ICTs) need to consider the impact of the technology competencies and attitudes of their users. Through this lens, we explored positive user experience in babyTRACKS, a mobile application for tracking early child development, while also considering the influence of users’ actual use of the system and their children’s developmental evaluations within the application. Mothers of 260 young children used babyTRACKS for two weeks, documenting their children’s developmental milestone histories and receiving personal developmental percentile evaluations computed based on the existing 3500+ user population. Questionnaires assessed their experience with the application and their individual approaches towards technology. Positive user experience with babyTRACKS was associated with user attitude toward solving technological problems, mediated by frequency of engagement in internet activity. Users who have a proactive approach toward solving technology problems, engage in a wide range of internet activities, and/or view the internet as integral to their lives had a better experience with babyTRACKS than users who did not. Positive user experience was not associated with the children’s developmental evaluation results nor the mother’s level of usage of the system. User technology competences and attitudes can impact experience in ICTs for health self-monitoring. Screening evaluation results, whether poor or reassuring, do not necessarily lower nor raise user satisfaction and can assist users in communicating their concerns with their healthcare providers.

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Notes

  1. Formerly known as Baby CROINC, CROwd INtelligence Curation.

  2. Milestone percentiles were calculated with respect to the whole population babyTRACKS children reporting the same milestone, out of over 3500 users. For example, a percentile of 100 for the “started walking” milestone meant the child walked earlier than all other babyTRACKS children who recorded that milestone (several hundred out of the 3500+); a percentile of 50 meant the child started walking at the median age for babyTRACKS children. Overall, higher percentiles indicated faster (better) developmental progress than lower percentiles.

  3. Even Likert Scaling was chosen for reducing respondents’ central bias tendency [49].

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Acknowledgements

We thank the team members for their contribution to the babyTRACKS system design, maintenance, and research: Gal Agmon, Moriah Anouchi, Daniel Moran, Elisheva Rotman Argaman, Eden Saig, Naama Tzur, and Yocheved Zaltz. We are grateful for the data collection of the students of the research seminar course in the Occupational Therapy Department of the University of Haifa, Israel. The research received funding from the Israeli Science Foundation (grants 1501/14 and 1435/18) and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (grant 2014-359).

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  1. Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Ayelet Ben-Sasson & Rotem Malinovitch

  2. Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Eli Ben-Sasson & Kayla Jacobs

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  1. Ayelet Ben-Sasson
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Correspondence to Ayelet Ben-Sasson.

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Ben-Sasson, A., Ben-Sasson, E., Jacobs, K. et al. The relationship between users’ technology approaches and experiences in a child development mobile application. Health Technol. 10, 1079–1094 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-020-00457-y

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