AWARE-Light: a smartphone tool for experience sampling and digital phenotyping

Due to their widespread adoption, frequent use, and diverse sensor capabilities, smartphones have become a powerful tool for academic studies focused on sampling human behaviour. While packing many technological advances, the need for researchers to develop their own software packages in order to run smartphone-based studies has resulted in a clear barrier to entry for researchers without the financial means, time, or technical knowledge required to overcome this technical barrier. We present AWARE-Light, a new smartphone application for data collection from study participants, which is accompanied by a website that provides any researcher the possibility to easily configure their own study. To highlight the possibilities of our tool, we present a research scenario on digital phenotyping for mental health. Furthermore, we describe the methodological configuration possibilities offered by our tool, and complement the technical configuration possibilities with recommendations from the existing literature.