Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although there are more than 60 smartphone apps for smoking cessation in China, many of them do not include the content and features that health care professionals and smokers prefer-which may make them impractical, unengaging, and ineffective. Therefore, we investigated both health care providers' and smokers' preferences for features of future smoking cessation apps. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate Chinese health care providers' and smokers' desired features of a smoking cessation app, with the goal of providing design recommendations for app designers and researchers. METHODS: Both Chinese smokers who own smartphones (n=357) and Chinese health care providers (n=224) responded to a survey collecting data on their sociodemographic characteristics and opinions on the importance of 20 smoking cessation app design features studied in previous US research. RESULTS: Chinese health care providers expressed strong support of smoking cessation apps on a number of attitude indicators (range 153/224, 68.3% to 204/224, 91.1%). They rated nearly all (18/20) features as very or extremely important (range 52.2%-83.4%) and rated nearly all features (17/20) as more important than the smokers did. More than 60% of smokers rated the following 4 features as very or extremely important: allow sharing the process of smoking cessation with family members and friends (216/319, 67.7%), helping smokers track their progress (such as the amount of smoking per day; 213/319, 66.8%), helping with the side effects of medications and nicotine withdrawal symptoms (201/319, 63.0%), and adapting to ongoing needs and interests of smokers (194/319, 60.8%). Contrary to a similar study of US smokers and health care providers, Chinese smokers and providers rated reputation and ability to communicate with family members and friends as important features, whereas Chinese smokers rated privacy and security as less important. CONCLUSIONS: The design of future smoking cessation and health behavior change apps should consider perspectives of both providers and smokers as well as the role of culture.