Create an easy to use and follow nutrition app, that helps adults to improve their nutrition with a supportive community encouraging people to make healthier choices.
Conducting interviews
Create Wireframes
Low and high-fidelity prototyping
Conducting usability studies
Accounting for accessibility
Iterating on designs
To start with the research phase I thinked about which user will use the app.
The research helped me to found out that most of the users of the apps related to healthy nutrition are between the ages of 18 and 45, so I decided to interview at least 5 persons at this age range.
I checked reviews on similar apps & services to gather data which I used to develop interview questions, which were then used to conduct user interviews done through usertesting.com
The initial user interviews revealed 3 common patterns:
Most interview participants aim to stick to healthy food to maintain strong health and avoid medical treatments.
It's clear that there's a lack of knowledge about how nutrition facts impact achieving a healthy body.
They need support; maintaining their motivation through a community helps them continue pursuing good health.
After research, I decided to create a persona who can represent goals and frustrations from the interviewed users, a persona who is into an age range of 18-45 years who's willing to acquire a deepen knowledge on healthy nutrition, and this knowledge drives her to cook great recipes breaking unhealthy patterns.
The user journey map helps understand a user's experiences and challenges in achieving a specific goal. It identifies pain points, improves user experience, and ensures needs are met at every stage, allowing for more effective and tailored solutions.
An audit of competitors' products highlighted gaps and opportunities for the Foodify app, guiding improvements and potential features to better meet user needs.
Click on the image to see the full audit document.
The ideation exercise help me to come up with ideas for how to address gaps identified in the competitive audit.
My focus was specifically on design a simplified & visually appealing interface that helps the user to explore topics and recipes easily.
The goal is to design a homepage where users can find all necessary information and be encouraged to learn more and cook new recipes, thereby expanding their knowledge.
To prepare for usability testing, I created a low-fidelity prototype that maps out the user flow of the learning path.
I conducted 5 moderated user interviews to collect rich, qualitative data in order to better understand the process users took to learn about healthy food and cook healthy recipes. I sent a follow-up questionnaire to users to validate the collected data and gain a more holistic view of their perspectives.
I conducted 5 moderated user interviews to collect rich, qualitative data in order to better understand the process users took to learn about healthy food and cook healthy recipes. I sent a follow-up questionnaire to users to validate the collected data and gain a more holistic view of their perspectives.
I transcribed each interview and conducted a thematic analysis before grouping key information into themes using affinity mapping. This allowed me to better visualise the data, have an accurate depiction of where users’ sentiments lied, and empathise better with users to inform design decisions.
The testing yielded many insights that revealed key usability issues with refining the preferences to learn and interact with the community more intuitive. Testing allowed me to better empathise with users while they interacted directly with prototype, develop a more collaborative approach to building a product, and uncover usability issues from a different perspective. These were the main findings uncovered by the usability study:
Test
Users want to prove their knowledge, so a test has to be passed for each lesson.
Audio & Video
Users don’t enjoy reading much, so they prefer to listen podcasts or watch a video.
Community features
Users do prefer an easier access to reach the community and improved features to find value.
Based on insights from the usability studies, I made design changes such as adding a test section where users can demonstrate their acquired knowledge. This encourages them to continue learning and engage more deeply with the content.
Acknowledging that users prefer not to read lengthy text, which can overwhelm them, I've integrated a section at the start of each lesson where they can listen to an audio or watch a video covering the same content. This accommodates different learning preferences and enhances user engagement with the material.
Based on the theme that users can’t easily find valuable information at the community and they want a reachable access to it, I added new button at navigation and included a search features as well as community topics.
The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability study.
Users have a big interest in making better eating choices, however changing old habits is pretty hard.
This platform was not designed to lose weight to be fit or gain muscles, instead fills the gap for nutrition learning and networking in a non-judgemental and engaging way.
First
Food and diet can be very personal topics for many, therefore, a very sensitive approach is needed in user interviews.
Second
Hear the voice of the users it’s even more important than design a minimal UI based on assumptions.
User Satisfaction
Conduct research on how successful the app is in reaching the goal to improve users health.
AI Assitant
I will like to introduce an AI assistant feature which will help the user cook a healthy recipe based on available ingredients on users fridge.
Goal Achievement
Conduct more user interviews to know how the users meet their health goals thanks to the app, and improve.