This diploma thesis deals with a product Google Apps for Work as a cloud-based tool for businesses. The main idea of this work is to describe the offered service and to deploy it to a real company on the Czech market, belonging to the sector of small and medium-sized companies. The theoretical part is based on a literature review of technical books, articles, and other electronic sources. The subsequent description and evaluation of the implementation is based on real-world knowledge in deploying the product to an existing company. The main contribution of this work is the introduction of service and submission of infor-mation to leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises and their IT specialists for decisi-ons regarding the implementation of cloud services in the field of communication and cooperation.

The Hybrid approach of development has for a long time been the dominating way to develop cross-platform applications targeting both the web and mobile. In recent years, a new combination of technology has appeared called Progressive Web Application (PWA) which aims to combine Native capabilities with best practices of the web to deliver a new Native-like experience to users without the need of Native wrappers. So far PWAs have proven to be the inferior choice when it came to performance and platform support. The purpose of this study is to compare the two technologies based on a literature review and evaluate the current performance across three parameters in an experiment - battery consumption, CPU utilization and time to first activity. Two applications were developed using each respective technique, with the Apache Cordova framework being used for the Hybrid approach and the React framework being used to implement PWA features. The results showed that the Hybrid approach is better in the majority of tests, offering more in terms of platform API access and providing better performance while only being slower when it came to time it took to first activity; but something to consider is that the PWA approach was not far behind. The conclusion this study arrived at was that PWAs have developed significantly since previous studies and is almost able to match Hybrid apps in terms of APIs and performance, but that Hybrid apps are still the preferred choice when it comes to performance. Further development and a wider adaptation of the PWA specification could very well change the way developers choose to approach mobile app development in the future as well as a potential for bringing the web closer to the mobile platform.

Since the advent of the smartphone, mobile applications on these devices have increasingly gained in popularity and have become a staple in the everyday lives of people. This trend has resulted in the development of millions of applications, yet the majority of them are never downloaded or used for a variety of reasons. It is therefore important for consumer behavior research to be conducted on a continuous basis in order to analyze and stay up to date with factors that lead to intention and thereafter, usage of mobile applications. Also, it is necessary to take into account the immense popularity of social media, which has provided firms with an effective avenue to market new applications. The purpose of the study is therefore to investigate the determinants of usage intention of new and free mobile apps in the context of social media marketing.  In order to measure intention, two proven and tested theoretical models were incorporated into the creation of the research model of this study and the formation of the hypothesis; namely the theory of planned behavior (TPB), as well as the technology acceptance model (TAM). To test the hypothesis, a quantitative study was conducted with the help of a self-completion questionnaire which was distributed on social media, and the data collection resulted in 250 valid respondents. The data was processed and analyzed using multiple regression using the statistical program SPSS in order to test the significance of the various independent variables with intention to use new and free apps. The regression analysis resulted in several hypothesis being accepted. Notably, intention to use was highly influenced by attitude, as well as significant relationships between intention and perceived ease of use, as well as perceived behavioral control. Significant relationships were also discovered between attitude, perceived usefulness, and trust. Marketers of new and free mobile apps should focus on fostering a positive attitude through marketing on social media, always be intent on trust-building activities, and work with the developers to create easy to use and highly useful apps. The authors recommend that future studies focus on the influence of different kinds of social media activities on consumers intention to use new and free apps, as social media was only the context of the current study.

[pt] Esse trabalho olha para como os aplicativos enactam a insegurança no/do Sul Global, de modo a compreender a mediação algorítmica da governança da segurança. Aplicativos são manifestações computacionais cujo poder reside em sua proximidade com o usuário final e em seu suposto papel democratizante e empoderante. Ao mesmo tempo, no entanto, esses apps estão embutidos e replicam uma geopolítica do conhecimentocomplicada que não pode ser entendida pelo que caracterizo como formas não monstruosas de teorização de RI, que, intencionalmente ou não, re-enactam a contenção da autoridade dentro das categorias do indivíduo, do estado e do sistema internacional. Em contraste, formas monstruosas de teorização, como aquelas que tentam explicar a política dos artefatos (digitais) e da sociomaterialidade, perturbam as fronteiras disciplinares, suas suposições e representações da política, a fim de expandir e estender o que é compreendido como política e autoridade. Ao engajar-se com uma compreensão da política de ambas na governança de segurança, esta tese argumenta que os aplicativos adicionam camadas de complicação ao nosso entendimento de governança, das quais lidarei com três: simplificação, formalismo e objetividade. Em um segundo impulso argumentativo, a tese sustenta que essas três camadas também são lógicas de computação que dão forma à autoridade de um aplicativo, mas não sem serem significativamente transformadas e reaproveitadas na prática. Na medida em que os aplicativos incorporam de forma decisiva contos sobre políticas democráticas e geopolíticas desiguais do conhecimento, cabe reconhecer que as questões práticas relativas ao seu trabalho de governança atravessam o Sul Global, entendido tanto como uma categoria de pensamento sobre os emaranhados pós-coloniais e as interações atravessadas pelas tecnologias digitais, como um marcador de hierarquias de conhecimento. Esta tese, portanto, fornece uma explicação alternativa para as interações de poder e autoridade que compõem a política de segurança (do Sul) global. Com isso, afasta-se da teorização abstrata para olhar para a governança computacional no chão, ou seja, nos contextos sociopolíticos em que opera, é concebida, criada e adaptada. Ao fazer isso, engaja-se em uma filosofia empírica baseada no uso de métodos etnográficos e no uso antropofágico de conceitos desenvolvidos por estudiosos de RI, filósofos da tecnologia, estudiosos de política digital e STS, e filósofos e sociólogos que pensando poder e desigualdade. O trabalho de campo foi realizado entre 2018 e 2021 com três aplicativos de segurança: Fogo Cruzado, EagleView 2.0, e UN SanctionsApp, e se compõe de uma colagem de métodos, que vão desde observações participantes, entrevistas, walkthroughs em aplicativos e pesquisa bibliográfica. Essa combinação confusa de métodos, objetos e lugares não pode ser vista como desvinculada do impulso conceitual mais amplo da tese, ou seja, mostrar que é na e por meio da autoridade dos aplicativos na governança no/do Sul Global, que podemos começar a abraçar os monstros que têm assustado a política de segurança por tanto tempo. E, ao o fazermos, seremos finalmente capazes de abrir o estudo da autoridade para suas manifestações processuais, transversais e múltiplas, por meio da computação, esta mesma entendida como um conjunto de práticas situadas, adaptáveis e contextuais, que tanto reproduzem como complicam hierarquias de poder e conhecimento. / [en] This work looks at how apps enact insecurity in/of the Global South in order to understand the algorithmic mediation of security governance. Apps are manifestations of computation whose power resides in their proximity with endusers and alleged democratizing and empowering roles. At the same time, however, apps are embedded into and replicate complicated geopolitics of knowledge that cannot be understood by what I characterize as non-monstrous forms of IR theorizing, which, wittingly or not, re-enact the containment of authority within the categories of the individual, the state and the international system. In contrast, monstrous forms of theorizing, such as those which attempt to account for the politics of (digital) artifacts and sociomateriality, disturb disciplinary boundaries, assumptions and representations of politics in order to expand and extend what is encompassed as the political and the authoritative. While engaging with efforts to account for the politics of both in security governance, this thesis argues that apps add layers of complication to our understanding of governance, of which I will be dealing with three: simplification, formalism and objectivity. In a second argumentative thrust, the thesis argues that these three layers are also logics of computation that give form to an app s authority, but not without being significantly transformed and repurposed in practice. To the extent that apps decisively embody both stories of democratic politics and unequal geopolitics of knowledge, we must acknowledge that practical questions pertaining to their governance work traverse the Global South, understood both as a category of thought about postcolonial entanglements and interactions traversed by digital technologies and a marker of knowledge hierarchies. This thesis, therefore, provides an alternative account of the interplays of power and authority in global (South) security politics. With this, the work moves away from abstract theorizing to look at computational governance on the ground, that is to say, in the sociopolitical contexts in which they operate, are designed, created and adapted. While doing so, it engages in empirical philosophy grounded on the use of ethnographic methods and an anthropophagic use of concepts developed by IR scholars, philosophers of technology, STS and digital politics scholars and philosophers and sociologists writing about power and inequality. Fieldwork was conducted between 2018 and 2021 with three security apps: Fogo Cruzado, EagleView 2.0, and UN SanctionsApp, and involves a collage of methods, ranging from participant observations, interviews, app walkthroughs and bibliographical research. This messy combination of methods, objects and places cannot be seen as untangled from the broader conceptual thrust of the thesis, namely, that it is in and through the work of apps as authoritative components of governance in/of the Global South, that we can start to embrace the monsters that have been terrifying security politics for so long. And if we do so, we might finally be able to open authority to its processual, transversal, and manifold enactments through computation, itself understood as a situated, adaptable and contextual set of practices, which both reproduce and complicate knowledge hierarchies.

Developers often need to re-engineer distributed applications to address changes in requirements, made only after deployment. Much of the complexity of inspecting and evolving distributed applications lies in their distributed nature, while the majority of mature program analysis and transformation tools works only with centralized software. Inspired by business process re-engineering, in which remote operations can be insourced back in house to restructure and outsource anew, this dissertation brings an analogous approach to the re-engineering of distributed applications. Our approach introduces a novel automatic refactoring---Client Insourcing---that creates a semantically equivalent centralized version of a distributed application. This centralized version is then inspected, modified, and redistributed to meet new requirements. This dissertation demonstrates the utility of Client Insourcing in helping meet the changed requirements in performance, reliability, and security. We implemented Client Insourcing in the important domain of full-stack JavaScript applications, in which both the client and server parts are written in JavaScript, and applied our implementation to re-engineer mobile web applications. Client Insourcing reduces the complexity of inspecting and evolving distributed applications, thereby facilitating their re-engineering. This dissertation is based on 4 conference papers and 2 doctoral symposium papers, presented at ICWE 2019, SANER 2020, WWW 2020, and ICWE 2021. / Doctor of Philosophy / Modern web applications are distributed across a browser-based client and a remote server. Software developers need to optimize the performance of web applications as well as correct and modify their functionality. However, the vast majority of mature development tools, used for optimizing, correcting, and modifying applications work only with non-distributed software, written to run on a single machine. To facilitate the maintenance and evolution of web applications, this dissertation research contributes new automated software transformation techniques. These contributions can be incorporated into the design of software development tools, thereby advancing the engineering of web applications.

Mobile Applikationen für Smartphones spielen eine große Rolle im Alltag vieler Menschen. Hierdurch gibt es auch ein wachsendes Potenzial, mit geeigneten Apps den Gesundheitszustand von Patienten positiv zu beeinflussen. Voraussetzungen für eine erfolgreiche Integration von Gesundheits-Apps sind dabei medizinisch sinnvolle Wirkprinzipien, eine gute Qualität der Apps und angemessene Datenschutzstandards. Jedoch ist es für potenzielle Nutzer nur schwer möglich, diese Kriterien bereits beim Auswahlprozess zu erkennen bzw. zu überprüfen. Geeignete Bewertungsschemata fehlen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit war, einen praxistauglichen Algorithmus zur Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps zu entwickeln, der die Aspekte der medizinischen Relevanz, des Datenschutzes und der App-Qualität am Beispiel angiologischer Apps vereint. Zudem sollte mithilfe eines standardisierten Fragebogens untersucht werden, inwieweit angiologische Patienten überhaupt zur Nutzung von Gesundheits-Apps bereit sind. Die App-Bewertung erfolgte in einem Vier-Stufen-Algorithmus. Zuerst wurden potenziell angiologisch relevante Apps durch eine semiautomatisierte retrospektive App-Store-Analyse (SARASA) identifiziert. In der zweiten Stufe wurden durch Ärzte anhand objektiver Kriterien Apps ohne angiologische Relevanz ausgeschlossen. Anschließend mussten die Apps in der dritten Stufe fünf Datenschutzkriterien erfüllen. Die verbliebenen Apps wurden in der vierten Stufe von angiologischen Patienten getestet und deren Qualität mithilfe der deutschen User-Version der Mobile Application Rating Scale (uMARS-G) bewertet. Weiterhin wurden insgesamt 344 ambulante und stationäre angiologische Patienten des Universitätsklinikums Leipzig mit einem Fragebogen zu ihrem digitalen Nutzungsverhalten und ihren Einstellungen zu Gesundheits-Apps befragt. Von 94 735 gelisteten Apps der Kategorien Medizin und Gesundheit & Fitness blieben nach der SARASA 226 deutschsprachige potenziell angiologisch relevante Apps übrig. Durch einen in der nächsten Stufe ärztlich durchgeführten manuellen Selektionsprozess konnten 18 vielversprechende Apps identifiziert werden. Hiervon bestanden lediglich zwei Apps die Prüfung von fünf Datenschutzkriterien. Die App „Sports Tracker“ zeichnet physische Aktivität auf und die App „Smoke FREE V2.0“ dient der Nikotinentwöhnung. Beide Apps erreichten in der anschließenden Testung von angiologischen Patienten einen mittleren uMARS-G-Gesamtscore, was einer akzeptablen App-Qualität entspricht. Somit könnten beide Apps angiologischen Patienten empfohlen werden. Der Anteil der 344 befragten angiologischen Patienten, welche sowohl ein Smartphone besaßen als auch eine von ihrem Arzt empfohlene Gesundheits-App benutzen würden, betrug 52,9 Prozent. Voraussichtlich könnten somit etwas mehr als die Hälfte der angiologischen Patienten mit Gesundheits-Apps erreicht werden und von deren potenziellen Vorteilen profitieren. Die Bereitschaft, eine empfohlene Gesundheits-App zu benutzen, korrelierte vor allem mit einer regelmäßigen App- und Schrittzähler-Verwendung und vorhandenen Vorerfahrungen mit Gesundheits- und Fitness-Apps. Hieraus lässt sich ableiten, dass es schwieriger sein kann, angiologische Patienten, die bisher wenig Berührungspunkte mit Smartphone-Apps hatten, zur Benutzung einer Gesundheits-App zu motivieren. Zudem besaßen ältere Probanden und Probanden mit einem niedrigeren Bildungsabschluss seltener ein Smartphone und damit auch seltener die Möglichkeit zum Gebrauch von Gesundheits-Apps. Der in dieser Arbeit vorgestellte und am Beispiel der Angiologie durchgeführte Algorithmus zur Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps kann auch von anderen medizinischen Fachrichtungen durchgeführt werden. Weiterhin ist eine themenbezogene Anwendung möglich. Der niedrige Anteil an Apps, welche die Prüfung der fünf Datenschutzkriterien bestanden, verdeutlicht die dringende Notwendigkeit einer Erhöhung der Datenschutzstandards deutschsprachiger angiologisch relevanter Apps. Zudem wurde keine noch verfügbare deutschsprachige App gefunden, die sich spezifisch an Patienten mit peripherer arterieller Verschlusskrankheit (pAVK) richtet. Um Patienten jedoch bei einer selbstständigen Durchführung eines strukturierten Gehtrainings bestmöglich zu unterstützen, wäre die Entwicklung einer qualitativ hochwertigen und datenschutzkonformen Gehtrainings-App für pAVK-Patienten empfehlenswert, welche die aus der hier vorgelegten Analyse gewonnenen Erkenntnisse ex ante implementiert.:1 Abkürzungsverzeichnis 2 Einführung 2.1 Definition und Verbreitung von Gesundheits-Apps 2.2 Effektivität von Gesundheits-Apps 2.3 Gesundheits-Apps in der Angiologie 2.3.1 Gesundheits-Apps zur Bewegungssteigerung 2.3.2 Gesundheits-Apps zur Nikotinentwöhnung 2.4 Datenschutz bei Gesundheits-Apps 2.5 Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps 3 Aufgabenstellung und Ziele 4 Methoden 4.1 Auswahl geeigneter Apps 4.1.1 Semiautomatisierte retrospektive App-Store-Analyse 4.1.2 Manueller Selektionsprozess nach vordefinierten Kriterien 4.1.3 Datenschutzprüfung 4.2 Rekrutierung und Befragung 4.3 Statistische Analyse 5 Ergebnisse 5.1 Auswahl geeigneter Apps 5.1.1 Semiautomatisierte retrospektive App-Store-Analyse 5.1.2 Manueller Selektionsprozess nach vordefinierten Kriterien 5.1.3 Datenschutzprüfung 5.2 Fragebogen zum App-Nutzungsverhalten 5.2.1 Charakterisierung der Probanden 5.2.2 Verbreitung von Smartphones und Schrittzählern 5.2.3 Nutzungsverhalten von Gesundheits-Apps 5.2.4 Bewertung von Gesundheits-App-Testkriterien 5.3 Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps durch Probanden 5.3.1 Bereitschaft zur Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps 5.3.2 Ergebnisse des uMARS-G 6 Diskussion 6.1 Digitales Nutzungsverhalten angiologischer Patienten 6.2 Potenzial von Gesundheits-Apps für angiologische Patienten 6.3 Relevanz der Kosten von Gesundheits-Apps 6.4 Relevanz von Datenschutzstandards bei Gesundheits-Apps 6.5 Algorithmus zur Bewertung von Gesundheits-Apps 6.6 Limitationen 6.7 Ausblick 7 Zusammenfassung 8 Literatur 9 Abbildungsverzeichnis 10 Tabellenverzeichnis 11 Anhang 11.1 Fragebogen zum App-Nutzungsverhalten 11.2 uMARS-G 12 Erklärung über die eigenständige Abfassung der Arbeit 13 Lebenslauf 14 Danksagung

Background: Mental health conditions are one of the leading causes of disability in Canada and worldwide, causing significant financial burdens to individuals, workplaces and the economy. This emphasizes the need to provide accessible support in the workplace to prevent, promote and manage the mental health of the workforce. Mental health apps present a promising medium to scale mental health interventions across the workplace. However, evidence related to how studies are evaluating mental health apps in complex, real-world settings requires careful examination. Purpose: The purpose of this program of research was to synthesize the current state of evidence on the evaluation of mental health apps in the workplace, including an assessment of their effectiveness and to systematically examine the implementation of a mental health app in a workplace as a case study. The first study was a scoping review examining the different approaches studies have used to evaluate mental health apps in the workplace. The second study was a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of mental health apps in the workplace. The third study was a mixed-method case study, informed by an implementation science theory to examine factors influencing the uptake and implementation of a mental health app in a mid-sized hospital. Findings: In total, 54 studies were included in the scoping review with main outcomes being: 1. Usage and feedback of the app, 2. Effects of mental health and workplace outcomes or 3. Implementation process. The systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 studies demonstrated the effectiveness of mental health apps in improving symptoms of distress, depression and anxiety, stress, wellbeing and burnout. mental health as compared to usual care. Findings from the case study indicated the need to carefully consider implementation planning, contextual factors and a fit between the app and the needs of the workers. Implications: This thesis identifies the potential of mental health apps for workplaces and highlights future directions for research to optimize their use and effects. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Mental health issues in the workplace are common and can be costly for organizations and people who are struggling. Mobile applications (apps) can be used to provide mental health support to workers. Through three separate studies, this thesis explores how mental health apps can be used in the workplace. The first study was a review of the literature that indicated that studies using mental health apps look at whether and how they are used, their impact and the process of implementing them in the workplace. The second study was a review of the effects of mental health apps that indicated that apps can bring about a significant change in the symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress, burnout and improve wellbeing of workers. The third study was the implementation of a mental health app for healthcare workers, which demonstrated that introducing a mental health app in the workplace will require careful planning and consideration of the different conditions in the workplace that will influence its use. These studies together show that mental health apps have promising effects, but implementation needs to be carefully planned.

The benefits of cycling are well known and many communities are investing in cycling infrastructure in order to encourage and promote ridership. Safety is a primary concern for new cyclists and remains a barrier for increasing ridership. Understanding what influences cyclist safety requires knowing how many cyclists are riding in an area. Lack of ridership data is a common challenge for cycling research and limits our ability to properly assess safety and risk. The goal of our research was to incorporate new data available through crowdsourcing applications to advance cycling research on ridership and safety in the Capital Regional District (CRD), British Columbia (BC), Canada. To meet our goal, our first analysis assessed how crowdsourced fitness app data can be used to map and to quantify the spatial and temporal variation of ridership. Using a dataset from a popular fitness app Strava, we compared how manual cycling counts conducted at intersections during peak commuting hours in Victoria compared to the number of crowdsourced cyclists during these same count periods. In order to estimate ridership at unsampled manual count locations, we used Poisson regression to model the association between manual counts and infrastructure variables found to influence ridership. Our results found that there was a linear association (r2 between 0.4 and 0.58) between crowdsourced cyclists and manual count cyclists, which amounted to one crowdsourced cyclist representing 51 riders. Crowdsourced cyclist volumes, traffic speeds, on street parking, slope, and time of year were found to significantly influence the amount of cyclists in different count locations with a predictive accuracy of 62%. Overall, crowdsourced data from fitness apps are a biased sample of ridership; however, in urban areas in mid-size North American cities, cyclists using fitness apps may choose similar routes as commuter cyclists. Our second analysis used crowdsourced data on cyclist incidents to determine the factors that influence incident reporting at multiuse trail and roadway intersections. Using incident reports from BikeMaps.org, we characterized attributes of reported incidents at intersections between multiuse trails and roads and also examined infrastructure features at these intersections that are predictors of incident frequency. We conducted site observations at 32 multiuse trail-road intersections in the CRD to determine infrastructure characteristics that influence safety. Using Poisson regression we modeled the relationship between the number of incidents (collision and near misses) and the infrastructure characteristics at multiuse trail-road intersections. We found that collisions were more commonly reported (over near misses) at multiuse trail-road intersections than road-road intersections (38% versus 27%), and incidents involving an injury were more common (35% versus 21%). Cycling volumes, vehicle volumes, and lack of vehicle speed reduction factors were associated with incident frequency. Our analysis was able to use crowdsourced cycling incident data to provide valuable evidence on the factors that influence safety at intersections between multiuse trails and roadways where diverse transportation modes converge. Through this thesis we help to overcome limitations for cycling research and planning by demonstrating how crowdsourced ridership and safety data can help fill gaps and supplement available data. Our methodology integrates the high spatial and temporal resolution of crowdsourced cycling data with the detailed attributes provided by traditional ridership counts. We also demonstrate how volunteered safety data can allow new questions on safety to be explored. Improving data available for cycling research allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence ridership and safety and, in turn, informs decisions targeted at increasing cycling. / Graduate

Bakgrund: Behovet av sjukvård ökar internationellt och allt fler av de vårdsökande är personer med långvarig sjukdom. Detta ökar kravet på vården och vårdpersonalen men även på de vårdsökande personerna. Egenvård är ett sätt att hantera detta och tas fram tillsammans med den enskilda personen och sjukvårdspersonalen. Ett nytt verktyg inom egenvård är m-hälsa där appar används som loggbok, övervakning och ett sätt att kommunicera med personer i samma situation och med vårdpersonal. Syfte: Beskriva hur personer med långvarig sjukdom upplever användandet av m- hälsa vid egenvård. Metod: Litteraturöversikt baserad på 14 kvalitativa artiklar funna i databaserna Pubmed, Cinahl, och Medline. Resultat: Deltagarna såg m- hälsa som ett hjälpmedel vid hanteringen av sin långvariga sjukdom. Motivationen till användningen under en längre tid minskade dock och även ökad stress och ångest var förekommande bland användarna. Diskussion: M-hälsa uppfattades till stora delar som en positiv upplevelse då personerna med långvarig sjukdom fick en bättre överblick av sitt tillstånd. De kunde lättare se hur övningar gav resultat i mätvärden och se tidiga varningstecken på en försämring av sitt tillstånd. Det fanns även de som upplevde att m-hälsa skapade ett beroende av tekniken och därmed minskade själv- ständigheten i sin sjukdom. / Background: The need of healthcare is growing all over the world and the amount of people with chronic diseases increases. This causes more pressure on the healthcare and the personnel, but also on the patients. Self-care is a growing phe- nomenon in healthcare; the way to manage self-care is different for everyone and is developed with healthcare personnel and the patient. A new tool used is m-health; in the m-health applications diaries, monitoring, and a way to communicate with other people in the same situation and with healthcare personnel. Aim: Describe how peo- ple with chronic deceases experience m-health during self-care. Method: Literature review based on fourteen articles from the databases; PubMed, Cinahl, and Medline. Result: The attendants saw m-health as a tool for self-care. The motivation was though decreasing during a long-term use and increased feelings of anxiety and stress was describes from some of the users. Discussion: M-health was mostly a positive experience for the attendants and they got a better overview of their disease and early warning signs if the illness was aggra- vating. The downside of m-health was the feeling of being addicted to the technology and that was lowering the feeling of independents.

Our increasing reliance on mobile devices has given rise to a new class of software applications (i.e., mobile apps). Tens of thousands of developers have developed hundreds of thousands of mobile apps that are available across multiple platforms. These apps are used by millions of people around the world every day. However, most software engineering research has been performed on large desktop or server applications. We believe that research efforts must begin to examine mobile apps. Mobile apps are rapidly growing, yet they differ from traditionally-studied desktop/server applications. In this thesis, we examine such apps by performing three quantitative studies. First, we study differences in the size of the code bases and development teams of desktop/server applications and mobile apps. We then study differences in the code, dependency and churn properties of mobile apps from two different mobile platforms. Finally, we study the impact of size, coupling, cohesion and code reuse on the quality of mobile apps. Some of the most notable findings are that mobile apps are much smaller than traditionally-studied desktop/server applications and that most mobile apps tend to be developed by only one or two developers. Mobile app developers tend to rely heavily on functionality provided by the underlying mobile platform through platform-specific APIs. We find that Android app developers tend to rely on the Android platform more than BlackBerry app developers rely on the BlackBerry platform. We also find that defects in Android apps tend to be concentrated in a small number of files and that files that depend on the Android platform tend to have more defects. Our results indicate that major differences exist between mobile apps and traditionally-studied desktop/server applications. However, the mobile apps of two different mobile platforms also differ. Further, our results suggest that mobile app developers should avoid excessive platform dependencies and focus their testing efforts on source code files that rely heavily on the underlying mobile platform. Given the widespread use of mobile apps and the lack of research surrounding these apps, we believe that our results will have significant impact on software engineering research. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-24 10:15:56.086