Diet Diary
Application to develop healthy eating habits
Project Type
Individual projectUX Research & Design
Tools & Methods
User Interview
Sketch & Storyboard
Persona & Scenario
Story mapping
Paper Prototype
Digital Prototype (Figma)
User Testing
Overview
According to WHO, worldwide obesity rate has nearly tripled since 1975. Data fromCDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) shows that in 2016, the obesity rate was 39.8% for US adults and 18.5% for children and adolescents aged 2-19 years. Obesity is a serious medical problem that impairs people’s health. However, it is totally preventable. The goal of this project is to help solving the weight problem.
Diet Diary is an mobile application to help people transform into a healthier eating style by developping the habit of evaluating their own daily meals. It can:
Record and evaluate daily meals
Develop the habit of self-evaluation
Build a community for sharing and peer evaluation
Roadmap
Research
In order to have a better understanding of user’s needs in the process of weight control and the challenges they have, I conducted several researches.
Why do we care about this problem?
According to WHO, worldwide obesity rate has nearly tripled since 1975. Data from CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) shows that in 2016, the obesity rate was 39.8% for US adults and 18.5% for children and adolescents aged 2-19 years. Obesity is a serious medical problem that impairs people’s health. However, it is totally preventable.
What are the typical barriers to weight management?
In a study by Cometto and Alyssa C, typical barriers to weight management include work(10.6% reported), sedentary (9.6%) and lack of time (7.4%).
Data Research
What are the current tools to help people solve the weight problem?
I analyzed 6 existing products on the market to see how they help people manage their weight.
Competitive Analysis
I found that tools on market mainly could be divided into three main categories:
Diet management tools
Exercise instruction tools
Body index analysis tools
Aiming at three important factors that cause weight problems:
Unhealthy eating habits
Lack of exercise
Lack of knowledge of personal physical condition
The competitive analysis helped me to narrow down the focus on my project and gave me an idea of what are the features that I may need. It also led me to think about the key brand differentiator of my own project.
To better understand the needs as well as pain points of my potential users, I interviewed 5 people who were surffering or had suffered from weight problems.
Key Findings:
Way to stick to the plan (Avoid giving up halfway)
General idea of proper calorie intake
Information of high-calorie food and key nutrition value
Ways to combine food management and exercise
Partners
Need Findings
Based on my research findings, I decided to narrow down the scope of my project and created a product that focuses on diet management.
Goals
Educate people about healthy diets
Help people evaluate their daily meals easily
Provide professional diet suggestions
Help people build plan and set up goals
Help people develop a healthy life style and Stick To It
Ideation
I made a sketch for 8 different potential solutions in order to visualize and better communicate the ideas. Then I created a storyboard for each solution to illustrate how they address the problem. I created several personas based on the user interview results and created a storymap for each of the persona to better communicate how the potential users could use the product to achieve their goals. The userflow illustrates how users interact with the product and helped me to organize the structure of the product in a logical way.
Sketching Potential Solutions
I created a sketch for 8 different solutions.
Storyboards
I created a storyboard for each solution to illustrate how they address the problem.
Personas
I created several personas based on the user interview results.
Storymapping
I created a storymap for each of the persona to better communicate how the potential users could use the product to achieve their goals.
User Flow
The userflow illustrates how users interact with the product and helped me to organize the structure of the product in a logical way.
Design Rationale
After mapping out the userflow, I used the QOC (Questions, Options, Criteria) method to evaluate and determine the actual features of the product. By comparing different design choices, I finalized the critical features of my product.
Develop & Iteration
With the main features and structure of the product in mind, I started to develop prototypes of the product. Within the process, I started off with a paper prototype. Based on that, I conducted two rounds of user testing and made changes accordingly to come to the final prototype.
Paper Prototype & User Testing I
I started with a paper prototype based on the user flow. At this stage, I focused more on creating the key features and the logical structure instead of paying too much attention to the visual elements. With the paper prototype, I conducted a user testing with three users to test the logical structure of the product.
User Testing I Findings
One user was confused about the slide bar (which is a recommended range) when choosing his weight goal.
Two users mentioned that they would like an option to save their favorite meals because they often eat the same thing
Mid-fi Prototype & User Testing II
Based on my findings in the first user testing, I made several changes and created a mid-fi prototype in Figma.
I changed the slide bar for weight goal into a simple input field with words informing the user of the proper weight range.
I added an “Add to favorite” feature so users could save their meals for easy record in the future
I added the option to adjust the food recognition results manually
Then, I conducted a second round of user testing to focus more on the details of the key features of the product.
User Testing II Findings
It wasn’t clear that users could change the units for the food
Users wanted to have more flexibility when recording meals
The wording in the daily self evaluation was confusing
Users didn’t realize that the note would be in the advice section
To give users more flexibility when using the photo recognition feature to record the meals, I added the option for the users to adjust the recognition results and add more food. Users can manually adjust the results whenever the recognition results are not accurate.
Users could leave a note for themselves as a reminder for the next day. Originally that note was put in the “advice” section together with the diet advice generated by the system, which was’t very intuitive. I decided to remove the note from the “advice” section and simply put it on the main page. This structure was not only more intuitive than the previous one, but also helped to emphasize the note and made it more effective as a reminder.
Final Product
Personalized Diet Plans
for people according to their physical body conditions, exercise habits and weight goals. Diet Diary provides instructions on not only daily calorie, but also other important nutrition indices including fats, carbs, proteins and fibers.
Easy Meal Record
with food image recognition, barcode scan and database search. User can also save their favorite meal for easy login in the future.
Realtime Diet Suggestions
based on user input and the current diet plan. Diet Diary tracks and visualizes nutrition value according to user input and provides suggestions accordingly.
Weight and Diet Report
to track progress and set up milestones. Custom milestones help user to set up short term goals and stick to the plan. User can also use the photo diary to take a photo of themselves everyday and visually track their own progress.
Diet Community
for sharing and peer evaluation. Users can find friends with similar goals in the community. Also, they could get extra feedbacks from the community and have a more comprehensive evaluation of their meals when combined with the system evaluation.
Daily Review - The Backbone
to help develop the habit of self evaluation and establish a healthy eating style. Users need to reflect on their own meals every day and they could choose to make adjustments to future plans and write a sticky note for the next day. This is the most important feature to help our users develop healthy habits and change for the better.
Reflections
I started off personal experiences in my first UX project. Once troubled with weight issues, I understood how much effort and determination it took to develop healthy habits and stick to it. That’s the reason why I designed Diet Diary. I wanted to design a product to help those who wanted to develop healthier eating habits and change for the better.
Challenges
Developping a habit is hard and I couldn’t force users to do things.
It’s still difficult or troublesome to accurately record the meals even with all kinds of features available.
I didn’t have time to prototype all the features in mind.
Takeaways
Research is VERY important to design. The research results helped me to narrow down the scope and contributed to a lot of my design decisions.
Good design requires effective communication. A design can’t be good if the designer is the only person who understands it. It’s important for a designer to learn how to efectively communicate his/her ideas to others.
I wish
I had narrowed down the scope of my project earlier so I could have more time to actually prototype my ideas.
I had done more research in the field so I could have a more in-depth product.
I had spent more time in the wireframes before I started to move to higher fidelity prototypes.