Track to Thrive
Simplifying the process of logging meals to help you succeed in your health journey through behaviour change
Through semistructured interviews, crowdsourcing, and literature review, we designed four features, grounded in behaviour change theories, to help reduce the effort required to track meals. The features were evaluated for perceived efficacy, receiving a positive reception upon preliminary evaluations.
This was a four week long project executed as part of a HCI methods elective.
Role
Researcher & Designer
Team
Team of 4
Tools
Figma
Methods
Semistructured interview
Crowdsourcing
Affinity mapping
Systematic brainstorming
SUS based descriptive qualitative analysis
Kano Analysis
Overview
Logging food requires a lot of effort
Problem
Users know that a good diet will help them achieve their fitness goals. But they are unsure about what to change in their diet because of an unestablished baseline.
"And if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."
Solution
A new feature within Fitbit's food tracker to simplify the experience of logging food, enabling the users to stay motivated and aware through their fitness journey.
Outcome
Final application design & solution
Over four weeks, we understood the pain points associated with logging meals on health applications, and designed fixes that systematically tackled the challenges encountered. These designs were prototyped using Figma, with preliminary evaluations demonstrating higher desirability from users to log their meals.
01
Simplifying access
Notifications and widgets that directly take the user into the flow that allows them to log their meals were introduced. This reduced the number of clicks required to begin logging.
02
Simplifying logging
Users are provided three simple modalities to log their meals - camera with AI detection, voice annotated logging, and an even more simplified text search.
03
Presenting logged meal
Users are shown their logged meal as a designed card that accounts for the method they used to log. This also provides supportive feedback by presenting their meal in a positive light.
04
Motivation through information
Incorporating nutritional and health-related information in the form of ‘Smart Cookies’, adds an element of interest and entertainment. Users may find learning new things about nutritional value or health benefits engaging, which can enhance their overall experience while providing tips and tricks to improve their habits.
05
Social stimulus
Encouraging users to share their stories can be a motivating factor in logging their food, as it fosters a supportive community. Sharing stories can also provide inspiration to continue engaging in the behavior.
06
Reflection
The Snapshot provides a visual record of their meals as well as offers daily weekly and monthly statistics on the consumption of macro-nutrients. This enables the user to to reflect on their behaviors, identify patterns in their diets and make informed decisions.
How did we realise these features were needed?
User research
We started this project by conducting semistructured interviews with participants (n=5; ages 22-35) about their fitness goals and how they integrate dietary targets into their daily lives.
01
Desire a good diet
Users believed a good diet would help them in all aspects of life
02
Lack of direction in achieving a good diet
While dietary goals varied in responses collected, the common culprit was users not knowing what change to make in order to achieve said goal
But this was information we got from only 5 user interviews. We decided to corroborate this information using crowdsourcing, asking a number of people to fill in the blanks for the statement below.
I want to _______ my diet so that I can achieve _______.
This made it clear that users had varying goals, ranging from just wanting to make a change in their weight to eating only certain macros. Some users were very knowledgeable about nutrition and dietary management, and other users less so.
So why aren't people able to keep track of their dietary needs?
Secondary research
Logging meals everyday is highly laborious
We reviewed several academic papers that conducted surveys on user perception of food logging apps and found that they do not make the task of logging meals easy. The amount of information asked up front either deters users from attempting the task, or the number of steps involved to get an accurate representation decreases the user's self efficaciousness in completing the task.
45%
Said it takes too long to enter the data
40%
Felt apps did not hold their interest long enough
32.8%
Found existing apps confusing to use
29%
Wanted control over data sharing
36%
Left app because of hidden costs like features hidden behind freemium models
Target users were defined
They were going to be users who had tried tracking and found it cumbersome, but who still wished to understand what they consume to make the necessary improvements to their diets.
In order to get existing users to regularly partake in the activity of logging their meals, we would need to design for behaviour change. One of the main challenges identified from our research was users giving up on tracking because of the high cost of involvement, which had to be addressed through our intervention.
Behaviour change model
Social Cognitive Theory was employed to improve self efficacy and adherence to logging
The theory suggests that if the capability to change one’s behaviour exists, enabling self efficacy, making the recipient aware of the potential health outcomes, and reinforcing these two aspects will help achieve one’s behaviour goal.
Project goals
01
Simplify meal logging
Reduce the barrier of entry to tracking the foods eaten in the course of a day.
02
Reward the activity of logging food
Reward users with informational tidbits about the food they logged to reinforce the outcome expectations.
03
Enable social engagement
Providing social proof, and using engagement to drive the motivation to log.
04
Reflect on food habits
Allow for a reflective analysis of foods consumed, giving the user agency in determining how they wish to modify their diet to meet their health needs.
Brainstorrm
Ideas focused on simplifying targets and increasing motivation
The brainstorming process involved two key objectives: 1) finding ways to simplify meal logging and 2) devising strategies to encourage users to consistently track their meals. Through various methods and approaches, our team worked to develop solutions that would streamline the process and increase user engagement.
Fidelity of information collected was reduced to ease the effort required to log
We realised we needed to make a compromise on the fidelity of the information users would be allowed to log in. Highly detailed information would translate to more insights regarding how to improve one's diet, but it also would increase the effort required to log.
Given that our target audience was quite broad, it was likely that they needed to be initiated into learning about the details in their meals. This also meant that they were unlikely to know about the details in their foods. Therefore, we chose to ease the effort by collecting information of lower resolution.
The structured brainstorming allowed us to weed out irrelevant ideas. The final user flow captured the most critical aspects of the design and provided a clear and coherent path for our design.
Evaluation
Usability tests were conducted with 5 participants
System Usability Scale based qualitative descriptive analysis through semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate the prototype with users. We also conducted a variation of Kano Analysis to understand which features were the most desirable.
01
Food logging
All users chose to log in using the camera function, thought it as very simple way of doing things.
02
Smart cookies
Users like the fact that its informational, useful and fun, but had trouble recognizing it and associating it with nutritional knowledge.
03
Social engagement
Users may not use the feature and share stories themselves, but like to look at others’ stories.
04
Snapshots
Central to the app, and most important feature for all user, most users found it clear, concise and useful.
Takeaways
Cookies feature is useful but needs improvements. Users love looking at their data! Even if users do not directly engage with others through stories they find it useful to stay motivated. Accuracy of AI image recognition could be potential pain point.
Conclusion
User-friendly experiences are born out of continuous improvement and research
Our focus has been on finding ways to increase user engagement while maintaining accessibility. We have explored various approaches, such as improving input options without sacrificing simplicity, incorporating Smart cookies to reinforce outcome expectations, and utilizing social stories as a motivator. While these efforts have shown promise, they have also revealed areas that require further research and exploration. For example, while social stories have been effective in motivating users, they have not fully met the needs of all users, such as accessing recipes. We will continue to evaluate and refine our designs to create optimal user experiences.
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