Background: The usability of electronic health (eHealth) and mobile health apps is of paramount importance as it impacts the quality of care. Methodological quality assessment is a common practice in the field of health for different designs and types of studies. However, we were unable to find a scale to assess the methodological quality of studies on the usability of eHealth products or services. Objective: This study aimed to develop a scale to assess the methodological quality of studies assessing usability of mobile apps and to perform a preliminary analysis of of the scale's feasibility, reliability, and construct validity on studies assessing usability of mobile apps, measuring aspects of physical activity. Methods: A 3-round Delphi panel was used to generate a pool of items considered important when assessing the quality of studies on the usability of mobile apps. These items were used to write the scale and the guide to assist its use. The scale was then used to assess the quality of studies on usability of mobile apps for physical activity, and it assessed in terms of feasibility, interrater reliability, and construct validity. Results: A total of 25 experts participated in the Delphi panel, and a 15-item scale was developed. This scale was shown to be feasible (time of application mean 13.10 [SD 2.59] min), reliable (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.81; 95% CI 0.55-0.93), and able to discriminate between low- and high-quality studies (high quality: mean 9.22 [SD 0.36]; low quality: mean 6.86 [SD 0.80]; P=.01). Conclusions: The scale that was developed can be used both to assess the methodological quality of usability studies and to inform its planning.

The Portuguese census of 2011 showed that 22,5% of the population of Região Centro was 65 years old or more. The increase in the elderly population leads to the need to promote healthy aging, with autonomy and independence, and preserving the functional capacity. As people get older, injuries and health conditions that impact on their wellbeing must be taken into account, and understanding what is adequate requires specialized knowledge and training. If people are left alone deciding their own activity level, they can be too aggressive and aggravate their injuries, create new ones and refrain themselves in exercising more, or too conservative and in the long run they will have an activity level under their potential and below what is recommended. In this paper we present SmartWalk, a project that aims to create a monitoring system of wellbeing and physical activity in the context of Smart Cities. The project is more than a smartphone application, as it will have health professionals operating the system and will take into consideration contextual and user specific information. The service is about helping people to have the best possible activity level, and do so without disrupting their routines.

In recent years, serious games and gamification strategies have been used in the education field and seen as highly motivating for educating and motivating younger people. As regard to games, and in the field of environmental education, they emerge as an innovative approach to raise environmental awareness among youths, namely by challenging students to develop their own games for learning. When research also mentions obstacles in involving students to explore educational contents through game design, this paper presents the Gamers4Nature Toolkit, an artifact developed to support the creation of digital environmental-related games by younger students with no experience in game design. The toolkit was used by 53 upper-secondary and 114 undergraduate students along several game creation sessions, leading to the development of 66 digital games. Findings indicate that the Toolkit was considered an engaging approach to game creation, making it a valuable resource to support educators in game design activities.