Abstract
This paper focuses on helping people affected by cancer – which is the leading cause of death worldwide - by identifying their personalisation needs for health websites. The aim is to identify a set of personalisation features that users prefer on these websites. Delving in a less explored area, the study also seeks to understand how user emotional states correlate with their needs for personalisation, to better define user models for health websites. Through a controlled experiment, based on the survey questionnaire method, we established that participants perceived that personalisation features offered on the evaluated website do meet their needs. More interestingly, perceived personalisation needs are influenced by certain emotions, primarily positively valenced emotions (e.g., interest). Finally, two factors positively impact intentions to reuse the website: personalisation needs and post-usage emotions. The outcomes of this study inform on ways to increase user engagement on health websites and improve online support available to people affected by cancer.
Highlights
Health information is the most sought after information on the Internet (Bright et al, 2005)
We hypothesize that re-usage intentions are affected by two factors: Hypothesis 4.1 (H4.1): People affected by cancer are more likely to subsequently use a health website when they perceive that the features offered on the website meet their personalisation needs
While other user characteristics have been studied in personalised systems, in this paper we argue that it is essential to consider emotions as a potential impacting factor on perceived personalisation needs and usage intentions
Summary
Health information is the most sought after information on the Internet (Bright et al, 2005). Users of online health services, in particular the cancer-related ones, are atypical Their characteristics and needs are unique, selecting the set of user features to be modelled requires careful consideration. The existing B&H online cancer services have made no attempts at personalising the content to the users’ characteristics and needs While they are clearly needed, no studies in this field have so far been applied to B&H, to the best of our knowledge. As a result of this work, a set of personalisation features has been identified that users prefer on health websites It provides an understanding how users' emotional states correlate with the needs for personalisation, to improve user models for health websites. The findings are discussed and concluded in the last two sections of the paper
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