A Market Research Approach to Developing Smartphone Apps; the case of "Active Mobility"

Health and lifestyle smartphone applications are proliferating nowadays to become the primary technological tool in support of well-being. However, most of these applications are developed on an ad hoc basis without considering real market needs. This paper proposes a market research approach to develop a smartphone application for promoting "Active Mobility". Such sustainable mobility, includes cycling and walking, which have a positive significant impact on the fitness and health of an individual, but also contribute to a sustainable urban environment. For this purpose, a market research survey was conducted to identify the key features and functions that the smartphone app should include prior to its development. The findings from the market research survey can then be used for the successful design and launching the new smartphone app. The proposed market research smartphone application development approach has proven to be highly important for the initial stages of software development, such as requirements elicitation and validation.