Exploring Localized Usability Implementation in mHealth App Design for Healthcare Practitioners in the Global South Context: A Case Study

Abstract

Purpose: This study was designed to better understand how mobile health applications (mHealth apps) designed in the Global North (GN) are perceived as usable, empowering, and persuasive by users, particularly healthcare practitioners, in the context of a Global South (GS) country. Method: This article employed an online survey of users of a mHealth app that was designed and developed in the GN for global use. Survey participants included healthcare practitioners from a GS country and the survey was administered by snowball sampling method. Results: Eighty-three survey responses from healthcare practitioners in Nepal were coded into three broad categories: user experience and mHealth apps, localized usability and mHealth apps, and persuasive design and mHealth apps. Their relationships and connections are examined within these categories. Conclusion: From a user empowerment perspective, understanding the interest, motivation, and concerns of end-users is vital to the development and implementation of mHealth apps, especially in the low- and middle-income healthcare contexts in which healthcare practitioners have limited resources. Culturally sustaining localized UX approaches should be adopted to create usable, empowering, and persuasive mHealth apps for use in resource-constrained cultural settings in the GS.