BACKGROUND The prevalence of smoking among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other sexual minority (LGBTQ+) youth and young adults (YYA) is significantly higher compared with that among non-LGBTQ+ persons. However, in the past, interventions were primarily group cessation classes that targeted LGBTQ+ persons of all ages. mHealth interventions offer an alternate and modern intervention p...

BACKGROUND Adolescence can be a fertile time for relationship issues, with interpersonal conflict being a risk factor for poor mental health. Mobile app interventions may have a significant appeal to young people in assisting with relationship distress. However, currently available apps have not been formally evaluated. Youths' perspectives on engaging with mobile technology to assist with rela...

The acceptability of mobile devices and mobile applications (apps) has resulted in exponential growth and consumption of such media. Although more than 50% of children under age eight have used a mobile app, there is still limited research on the utility of mobile devices and apps. With the growth in usage of apps especially by young children, there is tremendous potential for educational apps ...

Crowdsourcing mobile user’s network performance has become an effective way of understanding and improving mobile network performance and user qualityof-experience. However, the current measurement method is still based on the landline measurement paradigm in which a measurement app measures the path to fixed (measurement or web) servers. In this work, we introduce a new paradigm of measuring p...

This thesis explores the possibility of creating a portable, non-invasive, and robust sign language recognition system on a mobile device, capable of improving the quality of life of sign language users. A gesture recognition app was implemented for iOS in Objective-C and C++, using the OpenCV library for computer vision. This app was compared to the Thalmic Labs Myo, which has been successfull...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competition among mobile app stores for smart mobile media devices. Therefore, the business models of seven mobile app stores are analyzed with a special focus on Apple and Google. We use e3-value modelling – a formal business modelling technique – for analyzing the critical elements of these mobile ecosystems. The analysis of the app store ecosystems...

The promises of mobile technology in healthcare have led to a great many mobile apps in public app stores that target patients with specific illnesses. Medical experts have criticized the status quo of mobile medical apps owing to the low level of professional medical involvement in mobile app design, leading to weak clinical performance and a poor integration of these tools into clinical pract...

Mobile platforms combine state-of-the-art mobile phones, i.e., smartphones, with innovative operating systems and so-called app stores. App stores are a special kind of search and product market. They allow consumers to search, buy and install apps for their smartphone. These apps are built for a specific operating system and provide additional functionality. App developers use the app store to...

This paper proposes sets of patterns useful in designing scalable mobile app user interfaces targeted at multiple mobile platforms. These sets of patterns, called mobile-UiTS patterns, are derived from mobile platform vendors’ style guidelines and the common practices found in existing mobile apps. The resulting patterns provide solutions in specific contexts for the transition of mobile app UI...

App experience drives healthy mobile ecosystems. However, mobile platforms present unique challenges to developers seeking to provide such experiences: device heterogeneity, wireless network diversity, and unpredictable sensor inputs. We propose Context Virtualizer (ConVirt), a cloud-based testing service that addresses two challenges. First, it provides a large set of realistic mobile contextu...