Functional size measurement of postnatal care apps: Morocco case study

ABSTRACT

This study empirically evaluates the functionality coverage of 18 mobile applications (apps) for Postnatal care including a recently developed app in Morocco “Mamma&Baby”. This evaluation is based on a comparison of the COSMIC _ISO 19,761 functional size of these apps with the score obtained in a previous evaluation based on functions extraction through a quality assessment questionnaire. This comparison allows to discuss the relationship between the functional size of the 18 apps, their users’ ratings in the Play Store as well as the number of downloads. While for most of the assessed apps, there is only a small shift between the rankings of the two evaluations, for some apps, the shift is huge due to the number of features added and not covered by the score previously obtained. This study illustrates the use of COSMIC as an effective method for corrective or evolutionary updates since it takes into account all the functions and features of postnatal apps. For the “Mamma&Baby” app, efforts are required to boost the number of downloads, optimize its visibility, and attract the highest number of users.

KEYWORDS:

• COSMIC
• CFP
• postnatal care
• mobile applications

Acknowledgments

This work was conducted within the research project PEER, 7-246 supported by the US Agency for International Development. The authors would like to thank the NAS and USAID for their valued support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data and detailed information about the 18 mobile applications’ functional size measurements are provided and shared publicly on the platform figshare at.²³

Authors’ contributions

KM and AI prepared the study design. KM carried out the evaluations of the postnatal care apps using the assessment questionnaire and the COSMIC method. KM and LS interpreted the analysis results and drafted the manuscript. AI and AA revised the draft critically and ensured the accuracy of COSMIC method applicability. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Summary Points

• The main purpose of the study is to compare the COSMIC functional size of postnatal care apps to the

• score obtained in a prior evaluation and ranking based on features extraction.

• A total of 18 postnatal care apps were considered in this study including the fully-fledged Moroccan postnatal care app “Mamma&Baby” app.

• No correlation has been found between the COSMIC functional size, users’ rating, number of downloads and number of reviews of the postnatal care apps analyzed.

• Despite the valuable scores of “Mamma&Baby” app in terms of functional size points and assessment score, more efforts have to be deployed in order to enhance the number of downloads and users’ ratings.

• The findings of this study promote the use of the COSMIC method to measure the functional size of all mobile apps.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.