Dear MC community
I would like to know how the usage of mobile data with MobileCoach is? How do you estimate the data usage of an average intervention which takes max 6 weeks and has compressed multimedia content in addition to normal chat messages? Is a range of 2 - 4 GB data volume in your opinion sufficient for such an intervention? Do you have any experience in this area that you might have mentioned in a paper?
best
Dear Ramo,
The data volume corresponds approximately to the size of the media files (e.g. images, videos, audio) you integrate into your intervention. Based on our experience, I would recommend to integrate audio and video clips from professional portals, because they deliver the content in the optimal format for the respective mobile devices (e.g. depending on the bandwidth of the connection). So I you may use the show-web URL command in MobileCoach Designer and link to, for example, a Vimeo URL.
See here for a video tutorial: https://vimeo.com/404368142
BTW: In Vimeo you could specify an HTML page that should be browsed to at the end of the video clips, which then closes the webview in MobileCoach via Javascript, so that you end up in the chat window again.
Finally, I would add about 20% overhead of bytes (for the text messages, etc.). But, as always with technology and mobile applications and streaming of media content, I would also test it with real devices before you deploy your intervention to your participants.
I hope this helps.
Best, Tobi