Multimodal mental models: Understanding users’ design expectations for mHealth apps

Abstract

Employing qualitative structured interviews with mobile health app users, this research describes shared mental models for mHealth and reveals their complexity. The findings uncover prototypical design components common to mental models beyond health apps and suggest that users’ mental models are multimodal, containing distinct and often contradictory dimensions for evaluations of aesthetics and for craftsmanship. The findings also indicate that users’ mental models are informed by experiences with apps from across the mobile landscape. This research suggests that designers of consumer mobile health apps and mobile health interventions should incorporate prototypical or salient features. In doing so, they should index designs to trends across the larger app landscape and innovate the means to balance between multidimensional and conflicting mental models.