Table 3.

Intervention participant (person living with MCI) and PT identified facilitators to the clock yourself intervention

Sub-themes	Intervention participant (person living with MCI) quotes
Became routine easily	Yes, and because it was important to do the speed, yeah, but I was very happy that it was 5 min only (ID8)
	Yeah, and I had a routine. I had made that fit into my routine. I made sure I did it kind of between tea and sitting down to News or something like that (ID55)
Enjoyed it	I just like the variation of, you know, plain face to, you know, months Virgo signs – just the variation of it I enjoyed and then being able to then do the exercises in the brain coordination one, yeah (ID45)
	I initially felt very nervous about it and then I got to do it and I loved it and I just went on and on and on and I am quite addicted to it (ID65)
	I didn’t to start with, but I love it now. I even know all the animals off by heart (ID75)
Felt improvement	It was very good; it gave me a lot of confidence. I really liked it because I was getting better (ID08)
	Well, after a while it got repetitive and I could actually remember some of the numbers and steps, but I found that my balance must have improved quite a bit because altering around and going from left to right backwards and forwards (ID32)
	When I saw a bit of benefit and then I put more effort into it (ID57)
Able to progress	Well, I think that was sort of demonstrated when the person said to me well, shall we say that you’ll do the first and second exercises or the first three exercises – I can’t remember, it was either two or three. And I said no, no, I’ll have enough just to do the one, that’s how unsure about the whole thing I was. And when she came back I had done one, two, three and probably four (ID65)
	Yeah, I started off with just the Clock and then I went to the months, and then onto animals and then I was doing number double ups. And, at the moment, I have just started that one (indicating to one of the higher-level Clock Yourself exercises). I’ve only done that twice but this morning I thought oh, yeah, I’ll give it a go and I’ll just persevere with that one because the others are getting a bit easy (ID71)
Easy to complete	That was good, pretty easy. I’d tried all of the different things with it, but I did find sometimes I put my feet in the wrong place and all that sort of stuff, but instead of stopping I would just forward it and just keep moving, so I found it quite good (ID16)
	Oh yes, that was good; there was nothing adverse about it; it was easy enough to do (ID34)
	They were not that difficult and it was easy to follow (ID60)

Sub-themes	PT quotes
Relatable activities and easy-to-follow instructions	It is easy to relate to the instructions and I guess they don’t really get time to contemplate or think, it’s just a prompt and then they do it (PT2)
	The simple Clock and simple colours they found easy. They also tended to always go towards the calendar if they wanted to change the clock face. They seemed to understand the calendar face and animals was also a good one (PT3)
PT enjoyed delivering	I actually quite like the Clock Yourself app and I actually use it outside of the research study as well which has enabled me to get a good feel for the extra requirements to perform the tasks that are asked of the app and to get a feel for myself for what’s physically required and what I need to be paying attention to (PT2)
	I enjoyed giving that probably the most out of the descriptions and exercises because it was something that was visual; there was verbal, so it appealed to many different learning styles, which is why I liked delivering it, if that makes sense (PT4)
Ability to monitor engagement	With the app you have the activity log and I love that and it’s actually a really great way of showing them look how much stepping exercise you have done today, because we all know we should be doing about 10,000 steps or so and you know by the time you do that a few times, you actually crank up a whole lot of steps, so it’s very satisfying for the participants. And it’s good for me to see how they have done their homework. I cannot do that with the Balance book because they could tell me anything (PT2)

Sub-themes	Intervention participant (person living with MCI) and PT quotes
Motivation	Because I committed to it and I intend to see it through (ID16)
	Because I’m doing something for myself (ID45)
	Whereas other people who volunteered themselves because they can see the benefit for themselves. Probably progressed a lot more quickly (PT3)
Technology	Yes, that was fine, and fortunately I was presented with a machine [CD player] to be able to use it and that was very helpful (ID01)
	Well, it was handy because I usually do it over there by the sideboard and put the tablet on the top and set it all up and get my stance right and push the start button and go for it (ID42)
	The app, it was easy to switch on when it was on the phone; it was easy to follow instructions; it was easy to sort of play around with it a little bit and see what else is there; changing it from the clock to the months and increasing time and increasing speed. So I think it was the interest of having something on the phone and while you were on the phone just opening it and have a look at it (PT1)
	It was like there was a visual and an audio vs. just you are walking by yourself or you are looking at it by yourself (PT4)
Guidance from PT	Yeah, I most probably went back to them when I knew that they were coming out to see me (ID06)
	Repetitive use. My mentor had me decreasing the amount of time through each phase and she checked that when she paid a visit here. And yes, I was following it down in time that is of course. So that’s how it ran here (ID18)
	I had a lady who went quite fast and she said “Oh, I’m up to 80” and I said “Wow, I can’t do that.” So, let’s have a look then I saw that she totally missed the weight shift, she just was tapping. So, I said ok, now we have to take the speed quite a little bit back and concentrate on proper weight shifting because weight shift is what we need to do (PT1)

PT, physiotherapist.