SMSpress: An SMS research management system

Abstract

Text messaging is a functionality that has been widely adopted in user studies due to its presence in smart phones and feature phones alike. However the ability to use cell phones for data collection has been limited to researchers that have programming abilities. We present SMSpress, a web-based SMS management system that allows non-technical users to configure SMS studies. Researchers can schedule text messages for delivery to participants via a web-interface. We establish the requirements for such a system, and present the results from two case studies. One is a four month mhealth deployment with cardiac patients; the other is a usability evaluation of a study to help parents keep track of their child's development.