Understanding Cross-Cultural Requirements in mHealth Design: Findings of a Usability Study of Indian Health Professionals

Mobile health (m-health) applications are an increasingly important, cost-effective solution for recording, managing, and disseminating medical information. However, m-health applications designed without feedback from the intended user community may create significant usability challenges. A critical factor in the success of m-health applications rests on the design of user-friendly, cross-cultural interfaces to enable the usability, accessibility, perception, and acceptance of m-health applications. This is particularly true in international markets, where stakeholders may be from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. To assuage this point, this chapter presents the results of an initial usability study conducted over 6 months of eight Indian public health professionals’ user preferences in their interactions with an m-health application developed in the United States. Specifically, we use a qualitative analysis approach as a requirements analysis tool to identify cross-cultural factors that might influence usability, accessibility, and interaction challenges and affect m-health acceptance. Results indicate that technology familiarity, navigation, language, feedback mechanisms, cognitive overload, and background preferences are the key factors affecting performance and, ultimately, user acceptance.