Sentiment Analysis of User Feedback on the HSE Contact Tracing App

Abstract Digital Contact Tracing (DCT) is seen as a key tool in reducing the propagation of viruses such as Covid-19, but it requires uptake and participation in the technology across a large proportion of the population to be effective. While we observe the pervasive uptake of mobile device usage across our society, the installation and usage of contact tracing apps developed by governments and health services globally have faced difficulties. These difficulties range across the user-populations’ issues with the installation of the apps, us-ability and comprehension challenges, trust in the efficacy of the technology, performance issues such as the effect on battery life, and concerns about data protection and privacy. In this work, we present our findings from a comprehensive review of the online user feedback relating to the initial release of the HSE Contact Tracker app, in an effort to inform later iterations and thus help sustain and potentially increase usage of the technology. While this might seem quite tightly scoped to the Irish context only, this app provides the basis for apps in many jurisdictions in the United States and Europe. Our findings suggest a largely positive sentiment towards the app, and that users thought it handled data protection and transparency aspects well. But feedback also suggested that users would appreciate more targeted feedback,more proactive engagement and also suggested that both the ‘android-battery’ issue and the backward-compatibility issue with iPhones seriously impacted retention/uptake of the app respectively.