FoodSnap
Over a semester-long course on UX, I led product design on a mobile app that streamlines nutrition management process to reduce cognitive load for health-conscious individuals. FoodSnap is a meal tracking and nutritional insight tool that helps health-conscious individuals document their meals, understand nutritional contents, and receive personalized food suggestions, so they can achieve their dietary goals and maintain a balanced lifestyle.
duration
3 Months
Feb - May 2023
type
Mobile App
Health & Fitness
my role
Defining Problem
User Research
Competite Analysis
Information Architecture
User Testing
Wireframing
Prototyping
team
Sophia Yang (Team Lead)
Karen Ly (Designer)
Kelly Ma (Designer)
Jun Yang (Designer)
tools
Figma
Qualtrics
Key Features
Smart food scanning
It provides an easy-to-use food scanning tool that enables users to capture and log their meals using their phone camera quickly.
Delivers instant nutritional information for scanned items, aiding users in understanding the nutritional value of their meals and making informed dietary choices.
Daily nutritional insights
Offers a comprehensive dashboard that displays daily nutritional stats to help users track their dietary intake and stay informed about their eating habits.
Visualizes progress towards daily and long-term nutritional goals, reinforcing positive eating habits and guiding users towards healthier choices.
Tailored dietary recommendations
Generates personalized meal and recipe suggestions based on the user's dietary preferences, goals, and past eating patterns.
Continuously adapts recommendations to align with the user's evolving nutritional needs and preferences, ensuring a varied and nutritionally balanced diet.
Research
To understand users’ challenges in managing dietary habits, I interviewed 12 college students with 3 other designs.
I planned and led 3 interviews, where I inquired students about their experiences using nutrition management apps and their main goals.
I summarized 3 main themes of students’ frustration, including:
Time consumption in manual meal logging.
When manually logging food, the average user spends approximately 5-10 minutes per meal entry
Lack of guidance for new diet adherence.
7 out of 12 interviewees struggle to understand which foods align with their dietary goals
Deficiency in personalized nutritional goal setting.
8 out of 12 interviewees find generic dietary plans fail to meet their specific health goals
We also reviewed existing studies in the field to understand nutrition app's landscape better.
A pivotal study that informed our understanding was “Barriers to and Facilitators for Using Nutrition Apps: Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework.” This study highlighted the diverse needs of app users and emphasized the inadequacy of a one-size-fits-all approach. We discovered instrumental insights in shaping our UX strategy:
Personalization is key
Tailoring app features to individual user groups enhances engagement
Barriers to usage
Identified challenges include usability issues, technical glitches, data security concerns, and the need for manual data entry.
Facilitators for engagement
Features supporting goal setting, motivation, and integration into daily routines encourage app usage.
Comparison with fitness apps
User engagement for nutrition apps is lower than for fitness apps, mainly due to the required manual input.
Diverse user needs
A universal approach is less effective due to varied user preferences and needs.
Target User
We created 3 user personas to better empathize with users with different motivations and to help guide our design.
Our target users live different lives, but share something in common — they are health-conscious individuals with packed schedules and require nutrition guidance that fits into their diets.
Scenarios
To contextualize FoodSnap’s utility in real-life situations and to validate our design choices, we developed user scenarios.
These scenarios demonstrate how FoodSnap seamlessly integrates into various lifestyles and addresses unique dietary challenges and goals.
Storyboard
After consolidating core needs and frustrations from Personas, we created the storyboard using MidJourney, which showcases the process from awareness to retention of the app.
This includes setting dietary preferences, scanning pantry items to receive tailored vegan recipes, and updating her meal progress. This storyboard demonstrates FoodSnap's impact in helping individuals develop a sustainable, health-conscious diet, highlighting the app's practical benefits in everyday scenarios.
Competitor Analysis
I categorized core features of MyFitnessPal to understand the functionality design of existing nutrition tracking products.
Based on the thorough analysis of MyFitnessPal, I devised design opportunities that improve current functionalities that can improve current functionalities to solve user problems identified through research.
User Stories & Epics
From here, I translated user needs into actionable features.
We brainstormed a range of realistic user stories based on the insights from initial user interviews. We then organized these user stories into five broad epics, providing a structured overview of FoodSnap’s intended user experience. I prioritized features by rating them on a scale from 1 to 5 based on their importance.
Setting personal health and nutrition goals;
Using the app's scanning feature to document daily meals;
Receiving and following personalized dietary recommendations;
Achieving set goals and establishing new ones.
Information Architecture
Before designing wireframes, I laid out the information architecture for FoodSnap to ensure seamless integration of features.
It helped address overlapping scopes within our team and established a foundation for the subsequent wireframe design.
Wireframing
Building on the established information architecture, we developed wireframes to construct our initial tangible prototype.
User Testing
We conducted preliminary testing by distributing a Qualtrics survey to 44 individuals to evaluate the prototype's overall effectiveness and identify any areas of confusion or inconsistency.
Insights from User Testing
We validated our initial design hypothesis and iterated based on user feedback from the survey.
Users find value in tracking their daily nutritional intake.
The survey indicates high utility for the Daily Stats feature, with an average rating of 4 out of 5 for usefulness. Out of 44 respondents, 66.7% rated it as extremely or very useful.
Users appreciate the convenience and efficiency of scanning food to track nutritional information.
The Scan Button feature also received a high rating of 4 out of 5 for usefulness with 72.2% of respondents rating it as extremely or very useful.
This feature has a moderate level of importance.
While valued, it might not be as critical as other features, such as daily stats.
The respondents rated the usefulness of tracking progress towards goals at an average of 3 out of 5, and 44.4% considered this feature extremely or very useful.
Iteration
The responses also highlighted a clear preference for enhanced food recommendations over the food expiration tracking feature.
Thus, we decided to eliminate the expiration tracking and instead focus on developing a robust nutrition management system.
Final Solution
Onboarding
The first touchpoint for users
Designed to tailor the app experience to individual dietary preferences and health goals.
Dashboard
The central hub of the app
Recipe recommendations
Tailored to user preferences and dietary needs that ensure users receive suitable meal suggestions.
Daily stats
Provides a quick overview of nutritional intake and activity, offering users a snapshot of their daily health metrics.
Progress tracking
Visualizes the user’s journey towards their health and nutrition goals to encourage consistent engagement with the app.
Food Scanning
The core feature of the app
Allows users to quickly scan food items and meals to obtain nutritional information.
Food diary
A comprehensive tool for users
To log meals and track daily food intake
Profile page
A summary of user information
Analytics
Offers insights into progress towards the user’s goal.
Daily stats
Allows users to review and manage their dietary history easily.
Customizable goal settings
Adapts to changing health objectives or dietary preferences, providing a flexible and user-friendly experience.
Style Guide
We defined the color palette with the aim of encouraging users to think about healthy eating and fresh food choices.
Yellow is known for stimulating appetite and is often associated with food. Green is commonly linked with health and freshness.
For the typography, we wanted to convey a warm and friendly feel while maintaining a professional and modern appearance.
Lato is a highly readable font that is crucial for FoodSnap where users need to easily read text-heavy information like nutrition facts and recipes.
I used card elements and rounded buttons to reduce the user’s cognitive effort with heavy information.
Takeaways
The power of iteration
I discovered that iteration is a crucial part of the design process. It was through user feedback that I was able to refine broad ideas into workable, effective solutions. This iterative process helped me focus on what was truly important and feasible.
Value simplicity
I embraced the principle that ‘less is more’ Initially, I considered incorporating a wide array of features into the app. However, through user research, I realized the importance of simplicity and focused on what was essential, setting aside features that didn't add significant value.
Reflecting on future approaches
If I had more time, I would conduct a more extensive competitive analysis. This would allow me to gain deeper insights into the business aspects of the product, understand the trade-offs, and enhance the overall strategic direction of the project. This approach would likely lead to a more robust and well-rounded product strategy.