BELLY UP

CONTEXT

Tracking meal nutrients helps one to know what nutrients are in their meal, and nutrients missing from it. Examples of nutrients are Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Protein, Fiber, and Monounsaturated Fats.

This knowledge empowers one to build a diet that’s more nourishing and complete. 

PROBLEM

Figuring out what nutrients are in a meal is stressful and demotivating. 

My personal experiences further support this sentiment. 

Using manual methods — like a notebook, diary, or Google Doc —  to track one's meal nutrients is repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to error. 

Using automated methods — such as mobile apps — to track one's meal nutrients is overwhelming and not a good user experience. 

Some of the things that people have had to say about their current experiences in interviews: 

“I feel lost and confused when using nutrition-tracking apps and find it easier to just do my own research and methods.” — Norman C.

“I’m pretty busy with kids and work and don’t like having to use apps (because they’re hard to use) OR doing things manually (because it just takes forever).” — Ariel S. 

“I want my health decisions to be made by knowledge. Otherwise, I feel like I’m blindly following and becoming dependent on what the app is telling me to do.” — Danny F.

And online:

“These apps are bloated with unnecessary features that make them hard to use and that make what I’m looking for hard to find.”

“These apps show too much info that’s hard for me to process and that I don’t need for my goals.” 

SOLUTION

Based on the sentiments and feedback people provided, I designed an improved solution to track one's meal nutrients.   

Some of the features:

Only worry about tracking your meal nutrients. Nothing else. No other features. 

Learn about what the nutrients are for, and why they're essential to your body

Save the meals you make so that you can reference or make mods to them later 

Discover what ingredients you can add to your meal to get a missing nutrient 

TESTING AND FEEDBACK 

What users said when they tried the new prototype:

“Doing what I wanted, like adding ingredients and learning about what nutrients I was going to get from the meal I was eating, was really easy and fun.” — Nick C. 

“I loved how natural and relaxing your app felt. And it was so much easier than having to go online and manually do research to track my nutrition.” — Ashi R. 

“I love how I can learn more about a nutrient and why it's important. I think that's really needed, not just doing something without really understanding its importance.” — Danny F. 

And some data:

80% agreed that the app effectively helped them track their nutrition. 

100% agreed that the app helped them more effectively than the other alternatives they’ve used (e.g. apps like MyFitnessPal, manual methods).  

NEXT STEPS

As per the user feedback, I'll continue to make improvements to the design. 

My next step is to make a real mobile app based on the most recent prototype built. 

This will help me to get more data and insights on how else to improve the app experience.