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Become an app inventor : the official guide from MIT App Inventor : your guide to designing, building, and sharing apps
\"Have you ever wanted to build your own mobile apps? App Inventor, a free and revolutionary online program from MIT, lets you do just that. With the help of this companion guide chock-full of colorful graphics and easy-to-follow instructions, readers can learn how to create six different apps, including a working piano, a maze game, and even their own chat app to communicate with friends-then use what they've learned to build apps of their own imagination. User-friendly code blocks that snap together allow even beginners to quickly create working apps. Readers will also learn about young inventors already using their own apps to make a difference in their communities, such as the girls from Mumbai, India, whose app lets their neighbors know when it's their turn to collect water from the communal tap, saving them hours waiting in line. Or the boys from Malden, Massachusetts, whose app lets residents geotag potholes to alert city hall when repairs are needed. With this inspiring guide, curious young dreamers can become real inventors with real-world impact\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Managing the Versioning Decision over an App's Lifetime
The authors investigate app publishers' decisions to offer free, paid, or both versions of an app over an app's lifetime by taking into account the interplays between the demand for the free and paid versions and publishers' consideration of future profit streams. Their empirical analyses are based on a comprehensive model of publishers' versioning decisions calibrated on a data set of 584 top-downloaded apps on Google Play. They find contemporaneous cannibalization but positive intertemporal cross-effects on new users' demand between the two versions. In addition, the free version's active user base and in-app purchase and advertising revenues are reduced by the presence of a paid version, but not vice versa. Among the three options, offering the paid version first is the most common optimal launch strategy and applies to 40% of apps in the data. The evolutionary patterns of optimal versioning decisions vary by app category and are related to apps' abilities to monetize different revenue sources. This study provides insights on how to strategically manage the versioning decision over an app's lifetime and shows how publishers can make their free version apps more profitable via the deployment or elimination of the paid version.
Journal Article
An Overview of Chatbot-Based Mobile Mental Health Apps: Insights From App Description and User Reviews
Chatbots are an emerging technology that show potential for mental health care apps to enable effective and practical evidence-based therapies. As this technology is still relatively new, little is known about recently developed apps and their characteristics and effectiveness.
In this study, we aimed to provide an overview of the commercially available popular mental health chatbots and how they are perceived by users.
We conducted an exploratory observation of 10 apps that offer support and treatment for a variety of mental health concerns with a built-in chatbot feature and qualitatively analyzed 3621 consumer reviews from the Google Play Store and 2624 consumer reviews from the Apple App Store.
We found that although chatbots' personalized, humanlike interactions were positively received by users, improper responses and assumptions about the personalities of users led to a loss of interest. As chatbots are always accessible and convenient, users can become overly attached to them and prefer them over interacting with friends and family. Furthermore, a chatbot may offer crisis care whenever the user needs it because of its 24/7 availability, but even recently developed chatbots lack the understanding of properly identifying a crisis. Chatbots considered in this study fostered a judgment-free environment and helped users feel more comfortable sharing sensitive information.
Our findings suggest that chatbots have great potential to offer social and psychological support in situations where real-world human interaction, such as connecting to friends or family members or seeking professional support, is not preferred or possible to achieve. However, there are several restrictions and limitations that these chatbots must establish according to the level of service they offer. Too much reliance on technology can pose risks, such as isolation and insufficient assistance during times of crisis. Recommendations for customization and balanced persuasion to inform the design of effective chatbots for mental health support have been outlined based on the insights of our findings.
Journal Article
Practical React Native : build two full projects and one full game using React Native
Discover how to use React Native in the real world, from scratch. This book shows you what React Native has to offer, where it came from, and where it's going. You'll begin with a solid foundation of practical knowledge, and then build on it immediately by constructing three different apps. You'll learn how to use each feature of React Native by working on two full projects and one full game. These aren't just simple React Native Hello World examples (although you'll naturally start there!) but are apps that you can, if you so choose, install on your mobile devices and use for real. Throughout this book, you'll gain rea-world familiarity with React Native as well as supporting components from Expo, NativeBase, React Navigation and the Redux and Lodash libraries. You'll also build server-side code for a mobile React Native app to talk to using the popular Node.js and Socket.io library, providing you a holistic view of things even beyond React Native. And, you'll see many helpful tips, tricks and gotchas to watch out for along the way! \"Practical React Native\" offers practical exercises that will give you a solid grasp of building apps with React Native, allowing you to springboard into creating more advanced apps on your own. Creating a game with React will allow you to see a whole other perspective on what React Native can do.
Book
Mobile Apps for Common Noncommunicable Disease Management: Systematic Search in App Stores and Evaluation Using the Mobile App Rating Scale
The success of mobile apps in improving the lifestyle of patients with noncommunicable diseases through self-management interventions is contingent upon the emerging growth in this field. While users of mobile health (mHealth) apps continue to grow in number, little is known about the quality of available apps that provide self-management for common noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
We aimed to investigate the availability, characteristics, and quality of mHealth apps for common noncommunicable disease health management that included dietary aspects (based on the developer's description), as well as their features for promoting health outcomes and self-monitoring.
A systematic search of English-language apps on the Google Play Store (Google LLC) and Apple App Store (Apple Inc) was conducted between August 7, 2022, and September 13, 2022. The search terms used included weight management, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and diet. The selected mHealth apps' titles and content were screened based on the description that was provided. Apps that were not designed with self-management features were excluded. We analyzed the mHealth apps by category and whether they involved health care professionals, were based on scientific testing, and had self-monitoring features. A validated and multidimensional tool, the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), was used to evaluate each mHealth app's quality based on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (inadequate) to 5 (excellent).
Overall, 42 apps were identified. Diabetes-specific mHealth apps accounted for 7% (n=3) of the market, hypertension apps for 12% (n=5), and general noncommunicable disease management apps for 21% (n=9). About 38% (n=16) of the apps were for managing chronic diseases, while 74% (n=31) were for weight management. Self-management features such as weight tracking, BMI calculators, diet tracking, and fluid intake tracking were seen in 86% (n=36) of the apps. Most mHealth apps (n=37, 88%) did not indicate whether there was involvement of health professionals in app development. Additionally, none of the apps reported scientific evidence demonstrating their efficacy in managing health. The overall mean MARS score was 3.2 of 5, with a range of 2.0 to 4.1. Functionality was the best-rated category (mean score 3.9, SD 0.5), followed by aesthetics (mean score 3.2, SD 0.9), information (mean score 3.1, SD 0.7), and engagement (mean score 2.9, SD 0.6).
The quality of mHealth apps for managing chronic diseases was heterogeneous, with roughly half of them falling short of acceptable standards for both quality and content. The majority of apps contained scant information about scientific evidence and the developer's history. To increase user confidence and accomplish desired health outcomes, mHealth apps should be optimized with the help of health care professionals. Future studies on mHealth content analysis should focus on other diseases as well.
Journal Article
Smartphone Apps for Smoking Cessation: Systematic Framework for App Review and Analysis
Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death, and identifying novel treatment approaches to promote smoking cessation is critical for improving public health. With the rise of digital health and mobile apps, these tools offer potential opportunities to address smoking cessation, yet the functionality of these apps and whether they offer scientifically based support for smoking cessation are unknown.
The goal of this research was to use the American Psychiatric Association app evaluation model to evaluate the top-returned apps from Android and Apple app store platforms related to smoking cessation and investigate the common app features available for end users.
We conducted a search of both Android and iOS app stores in July 2021 for apps related to the keywords \"smoking,\" \"tobacco,\" \"smoke,\" and \"cigarette\" to evaluate apps for smoking cessation. Apps were screened for relevance, and trained raters identified and analyzed features, including accessibility (ie, cost), privacy, clinical foundation, and features of the apps, using a systematic framework of 105 objective questions from the American Psychiatric Association app evaluation model. All app rating data were deposited in mindapps, a publicly accessible database that is continuously updated every 6 months given the dynamic nature of apps available in the marketplace. We characterized apps available in July 2021 and November 2022.
We initially identified 389 apps, excluded 161 due to irrelevance and nonfunctioning, and rated 228, including 152 available for Android platforms and 120 available for iOS platforms. Some of the top-returned apps (71/228, 31%) in 2021 were no longer functioning in 2022. Our analysis of rated apps revealed limitations in accessibility and features. While most apps (179/228, 78%) were free to download, over half had costs associated with in-app purchases or full use. Less than 65% (149/228) had a privacy policy addressing the data collected in the app. In terms of intervention features, more than 56% (128/228) of apps allowed the user to set and check in on goals, and more than 46% (106/228) of them provided psychoeducation, although few apps provided evidence-based support for smoking cessation, such as peer support or skill training, including mindfulness and deep breathing, and even fewer provided evidence-based interventions, such as acceptance and commitment therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Only 12 apps in 2021 and 11 in 2022 had published studies supporting the feasibility or efficacy for smoking cessation.
Numerous smoking cessation apps were identified, but analysis revealed limitations, including high rates of irrelevant and nonfunctioning apps, high rates of turnover, and few apps providing evidence-based support for smoking cessation. Thus, it may be challenging for consumers to identify relevant, evidence-based apps to support smoking cessation in the app store, and a comprehensive evaluation system of mental health apps is critically important.
Journal Article
Google Cloud platform in action
Cloud services make it easy to get infrastructure in a flexible and on-demand way. While there are many cloud services to choose from, Google Cloud Platform offers unique services that let you focus on building powerful applications. Google Cloud Services in Action teaches readers to build and launch web applications that scale while leveraging the Google Cloud Platform. Readers begin with the basics, learning how cloud services work, and the specifics of the Google Cloud Platform. The book includes hands-on step-by-step instruction on deploying applications, handling large amounts of data, and much more. By the end, readers will know how to build, leverage, and deploy cloud-based applications so web applications get started more quickly, suffer fewer disasters, and require less maintenance.
Book
Characterizing Consumer Smartphone Apps for Virtual Reality–Based Exposure Therapy: Content Analysis
In vivo exposure therapy is the most effective treatment for phobias but is often impractical. Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) can help overcome critical barriers to in vivo exposure therapy. However, accessible mobile software related to VRET is not well understood.
The purpose of our study is to describe the landscape of accessible smartphone apps with potential utility for clinical VRET.
We conducted a content analysis of publicly available smartphone apps related to virtual reality on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store as of March 2020.
The initial search yielded 525 apps, with 84 apps (52 on the Google Play Store and 32 on the Apple App Store) included for analysis. The most common phobic stimulus depicted was bodies of water or weather events (25/84, 29.8%), followed by heights (24/84, 28.6%), and animals (23/84, 27.4%). More than half of the apps were visually abstract (39/84, 53.5%). Most apps were free to use (48/84, 57.1%), while the rest were free to try (22/84, 26.2%) or required payment for use (14/84, 16.7%), with the highest cost for use being US $6. The average overall app rating was 2.9 stars out of 5, but the number of ratings ranged from 0 to 49,233. None of the 84 apps advertised compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, offered the ability to monitor data, provided clinician control over variables in the app experiences, or explicitly stated use by or development with clinicians.
None of the smartphone apps reviewed were explicitly developed for phobia therapy. However, 16 of the 84 included apps were considered ideal candidates to investigate further as part of treatment due to their accessibility, depiction of phobia-relevant stimuli, low or no cost, and high user scores. Most of these apps were visually abstract and free to use, making them accessible and potentially flexible as part of clinical exposure hierarchies. However, none of the apps were designed for clinical use, nor did they provide tools for clinician workflows. Formal evaluation of these accessible smartphone apps is needed to understand the clinical potential of accessible VRET solutions.
Journal Article