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Contact Tracing Apps: A Comparative Analysis of Canada's COVID Alert and India's Aarogya Setu based on Persuasive System Design Model

. Few months into the pandemic, contact tracing apps (CTAs) were launched by national and provincial governments worldwide to help in curbing the spread of COVID-19. However, their adoption has been slow and low. This calls for their evaluation using established design frameworks with a view to finding ways to improve their design, make them more effective and increase uptake. Given the endemic potential of COVID-19, CTAs may continue to be relevant in our lives. In this paper, we compared the CTA of a high-income, developed, less populous country (Canada – COVID Alert) with that of a middle-income, developing, populous country (India - Aarogya Setu) to uncover design lessons that designers and sponsors of both apps can learn from each other to improve future iterations. We used the Persuasive System Design (PSD) Model (a design, implementation, and evaluation framework) to assess the similarities and differences of both apps. We found that the Indian app supports more persuasive features from the PSD model than the Canadian app. For example, while the Indian app supports persuasive strategies such as Personalization, Reminder, Social Role, Normative Influence and Social Location Monitoring, the Canadian does not. We discuss the findings and made recommendations for future CTA design.