Development and usability evaluation of a nutrition and lifestyle guidance application for people living with and beyond cancer.

Abstract

There is a need to provide accessible information for health care professionals and for people living beyond treatment. Mobile and digital health technologies provide an ideal platform to access diet and nutrition guidance that is both trusted and evidence-based and so that people know how to alter and monitor eating patterns and behaviours to improve the quality of life. Participatory design and usability evaluation approaches have been utilised to develop a nutrition and lifestyle guidance smartphone application for both people living with and beyond cancer, and for health care professionals involved in advising such patients. The challenges centred on the design, development and evaluation of the first version of a new mobile application named ‘Life Beyond’ are presented. This proof of concept application aims to centralise evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle guidance for those living beyond cancer. It enables users to obtain guidance and information, create and track nutrition and activity related goals and track their progress in the completion of these goals. Consistent feedback from participatory design and usability evaluations drove this research and helped to create an initial solution that met the user expectations. The System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 67.69 denotes an ‘average’ usability and hence further development. More research of extensive end user engagement is needed before an optimal solution is disseminated.