A feature-based qualitative assessment of smoking cessation mobile applications

Understanding users’ acceptance of smoking cessation interventions features is a precursor to mobile cessation apps’ uptake and use. We gauged perceptions of three features of smoking cessation mobile interventions (self-monitoring, tailored feedback and support, educational content) and their design in two smoking cessation apps, Quit Journey and QuitGuide, among young adults with low socioeconomic status (SES) who smoke. A convenience sample of 38 current cigarette smokers 18-29-years-old who wanted to quit and were non-college-educated nor currently enrolled in a four-year college participated in 12 semi-structured virtual focus group discussions on GoTo Meeting. Discussions were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded using the second Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) constructs (i.e., performance and effort expectancies, hedonic motivation, facilitating conditions, social influence), sentiment (i.e., positive, neutral, negative), and app features following a deductive thematic analysis approach. Participants (52.63% female, 42.10% non-Hispanic White) expressed positive sentiment toward self-monitoring (73.02%), tailored feedback and support (70.53%) and educational content (64.58%). Across both apps, performance expectancy was the dominant theme discussed in relation to feature acceptance (47.43%). Features’ perceived usefulness centered on the reliability of apps in tracking smoking triggers over time, accommodating within- and between-person differences, and availability of on-demand cessation-related information. Skepticism about features’ usefulness included the possibility of unintended consequences of self-monitoring, burden associated with user-input and effectiveness of tailored support given the unpredictable timing of cravings, and repetitiveness of cessation information. All features were perceived as easy to use. Other technology acceptance themes (e.g., social influence) were minimally discussed. Acceptance of features common to smoking cessation mobile applications among low socioeconomic young adult smokers was owed primarily to their perceived usefulness and ease of use. To increase user acceptance, developers should maximize integration within app features and across other apps and mobile devices.Author summary: Smoking cessation mobile apps have features to help people stop smoking. The most common features include allowing users to track their smoking behavior and triggers, to receive tailored support, and to access information on how to quit smoking. We asked 38 non-college-educated individuals who smoke about their opinions of these features as presented in two cessation apps, QuitGuide and Quit Journey. The first has been publicly available since 2010, and the second is a new app that our team has developed. People thought the features of self-monitoring, tailored feedback and support, and educational content were useful and easy to use. Specifically, they thought these features made tracking their smoking behavior easy and reliable, accommodated their individual needs, and allowed easy access to quitting information. They had concerns about the burden imposed on users to input information into the app, that the timing of tailored support might not match the times when they need support, and that the quit information was already known. We will use these suggestions to improve Quit Journey. Understanding people’s opinions about features of smoking cessation apps is important because people are inclined to use technologies if they see them as useful and easy to use.