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Creating Opportunities: Co-designing an mHealth App with Older Adults

Abhinav Choudhry, Bashab Mazumder, Lauren Alyssa Marks, Roqaya Elmenshawy, Devorah Kletenik, Sean Mullen, Rachel F. Adler

TL;DR

This study addresses the challenge of promoting physical activity among older adults by employing a co-design approach with four adults aged 60–70 to shape a mobile health app and a GenAI-powered health coach. The authors implement a Figma prototype and a privacy-conscious, RAG-enabled conversational agent with dynamic context injection, backed by a curated knowledge base and wearable data integration. Through iterative, remote co-design sessions, they identify nine design themes spanning usability, multimodality, privacy, and data collection, offering concrete guidance for incremental, user-centered development. The work contributes practical recommendations for building reliable, accessible GenAI health coaches for older adults and highlights the tradeoffs between safety, coverage, and user experience in mHealth contexts.

Abstract

We conducted a qualitative co-design study with four adults aged 60+ to gather design insights on a Figma prototype and a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot for an app aimed at providing an AI coach to support older adults' physical activity. The initial design for both incorporates several novel aspects: a curated health knowledge base, personalised responses based on goals and health history, privacy considerations, integration with wearables for physical activity context, as well as dynamic context injection. The study yielded feedback on improving both the proposed user experience in the app and the conversation flow with the chatbot, and it will aid future work aimed at implementing a GenAI-powered health coach for older adults.

Creating Opportunities: Co-designing an mHealth App with Older Adults

TL;DR

This study addresses the challenge of promoting physical activity among older adults by employing a co-design approach with four adults aged 60–70 to shape a mobile health app and a GenAI-powered health coach. The authors implement a Figma prototype and a privacy-conscious, RAG-enabled conversational agent with dynamic context injection, backed by a curated knowledge base and wearable data integration. Through iterative, remote co-design sessions, they identify nine design themes spanning usability, multimodality, privacy, and data collection, offering concrete guidance for incremental, user-centered development. The work contributes practical recommendations for building reliable, accessible GenAI health coaches for older adults and highlights the tradeoffs between safety, coverage, and user experience in mHealth contexts.

Abstract

We conducted a qualitative co-design study with four adults aged 60+ to gather design insights on a Figma prototype and a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot for an app aimed at providing an AI coach to support older adults' physical activity. The initial design for both incorporates several novel aspects: a curated health knowledge base, personalised responses based on goals and health history, privacy considerations, integration with wearables for physical activity context, as well as dynamic context injection. The study yielded feedback on improving both the proposed user experience in the app and the conversation flow with the chatbot, and it will aid future work aimed at implementing a GenAI-powered health coach for older adults.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 23 sections, 1 figure, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background Literature
  3. System Design
  4. Prototype Design
  5. Conversational Agent
  6. Methodology
  7. Results
  8. Visual Familiarity and Predictability
  9. Adequate Context and Explanations
  10. A process of iteration not 'front-loading'
  11. Multi-device compatibility
  12. Intelligent use of colour contrasts
  13. Use of Menus and Landing Pages
  14. Multimodality
  15. Privacy affects information shared
  16. ...and 8 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Screenshots of the health app, showing (a) the main screen (b) the ability to chat with a health coach, (c) view exercises, (d) track activities, (e) gamification challenges, and (f) customise the avatar, its voice, and personality.