The rise and fall of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: when NFRs collide with pandemic

To complement the manual contact-tracing methods, a flood of coronavirus-related apps was launched in the first half of 2020. Despite the incredible promises made by the governments, contact-tracing apps did not live up to expectations. We analyzed the government commissioned contact-tracing apps from four countries in order to understand the non-functional requirements (NFRs) and socio-technical factors that hindered the success of these apps. We used the user reviews from the app stores for iOS and Android versions, and identified top news articles related to each app. We analyzed the timeline of events through news article along with the app reviews, NFR analysis, cultural comparison, and political influences. Our investigation revealed that the dominant factors behind the negligible success of these apps are complex and entangled with the cultural and political dimensions rather than being just technical. The multilayer diversity of the target users also impacted the design and development of contact-tracing apps in an extremely challenging situation. Our analysis brings into light important elements that are not normally considered as NFR but should be studied in the design of crisis management apps.