Apps for life change: Critical review and solution directions

More and more users are using mobile apps to achieve changes in their lives related to their health. Given the complex task of accomplishing long-term behavioural change, developers have started to incorporate game elements into their apps as motivational tools and to increase user engagement. However, with increasing number of health-related apps available on mobile platforms every day, several issues have started to arise. In this paper, we critically review the health app landscape from several perspectives. We underline the current lack of scientific theory usage in app development, inefficient and selective embedding of gamification, low levels of personalization and potential privacy and trust issues in this domain. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of this set of problems, we propose integrated and user-centred frameworks as one potential solution direction to resolve problems both users and app-developers are facing today.