ADAMAS
DESIGN CHALLENGE
Our challenge was to design a convenient and useful way for college students to track their nutritious habits and understand the role of nutrition in achieving their fitness goal.
Role
User Research, Prototyping, UI Design
Design Team
Oscar Lai, Kayla Lee, Noah Lee, Lee Liang
Problem
Statement
Our goal is to help college students who are involved in fitness achieve their primary fitness goal through nutrition. Our solution is an app with 4 main functions: to log your consumed and purchased food items, track your daily caloric stats, recommend meals based on your daily caloric goal and purchased food, and assist in food purchasing with a smart assistant. Through using our smartwatch and mobile duo interfaces, students will be able to effectively track their daily caloric levels and get suggestions from our AI that will assist the user in reaching their primary fitness goal.
Research
Methods
Needfinding
FIELD OBSERVATIONS
To begin our project, we did some online research to get to know our topic. We looked at existing apps and technologies for health conscious users, such as MyFitnessPal and FitBits. To really find user needs, each team member spent an hour doing field observations in either a market or gym. Some key insights we discovered were:
- Users buy based on habit - aka the morning coffee
- “It’s just what I like.”
- Convenience
- Unaware of resources (nutritionist, health program)
RESEARCH TOPIC
How college students who are interested in staying fit make healthy food purchasing decisions.
User Personas
PRIMARY STAKEHOLDER
Jessica is a third-year student who goes to the gym once a week and is interested in healthy eating and staying fit. She often goes to the store and buys items based on routine but wants to begin making better food purchasing decisions but doesn’t know where to start. She has looked at the current apps on the market but they don’t make personalized recommendations based on nutrition preferences. She is looking for a quick and convenient way to track what she is eating on a daily basis and receive feedback about her progress toward achieving her goal of maintaining her weight.
SECONDARY STAKEHOLDER
Jenny is Jessica’s roommate who wants to help Jessica achieve her fitness goal. She and Jessica work out once a week at their local gym. Jenny knows that Jessica is trying to stay healthy and wants to keep Jessica accountable through encouraging her to be mindful of her food purchasing decisions.
Storyboards
User Interviews
INTERVIEW METHODOLOGY
15 Interviewees of Varying Levels of Activity (Sedentary → Moderate → Active)
*Example Interview Questions*
- Tell me about your typical workout regimen.
- How do you track your workouts?
- What factors determine which foods you decide to eat?
- How do you determine if a food is healthy or nutritious?
- What are you doing to achieve your primary fitness goal? (what would help you?)
- Can you relate to this storyboard?
INTERVIEW DATA
KEY INSIGHTS
- The definition of "healthy eating" greatly varies from individual to individual.
“The food I eat is healthy as long as my mouth doesn’t hurt after I eat it.” - Schyler
- All 15 of our interviewees acknowledged the need to change their current eating habits to successfully achieve their primary fitness goal.
- Users believe that setting certain reminders and determining checkpoints create a sense of accountability and help maintain consistency
“I didn’t make any progress with my lifts until I started to track them in my phone.” - Matthew
- Convenience, affordability, and accessibility are the key factors that impact food purchases.
- Over half of our interviewees understand the importance of eating three meals a day but often only eat two.
“I tend to buy based on habit and what I’ve eaten before so I don’t typically count calories.” - Samantha
Mission Statement
“Helping college students interested in fitness achieve their primary fitness goal through nutrition”
Paper Prototype
Mood Board
Motivated
Determined
Empowered
Strong
Healthy
Design Language System
Setup and Interaction
Smartwatch
Smartphone
User Flow 1 - Onboarding
Splash Screen
Onboarding Process: input general information for app to recognize proper diet to recommend
Home Screen: check stats for main macros and navigate to different parts of the app
USER FLOW 2 - ADDING AN ITEM TO FRIDGE
Main Fridge: see what ingredients/food you have in your fridge currently
Detailed Item: tap on an item to get a detailed breakdown of the micro and macro nutrients it has
Add Item: tap the green “+” button to quickly update the inventory of an item in your fridge
Add New Item(s): tap the “+” button on the top right of the fridge screen to add new item(s) to your fridge
USER FLOW 3 - CONSUMING AN ITEM
Main Fridge: see what ingredients/food you have in your fridge currently
Consumed Item: tap the blue “consume” button to consume and add an item to your daily intake or manually add items not in your fridge with “+” button on the top right of the screen
Consumed: this is where all your consumed foods are located; you can also favorite a certain food
USER FLOW 4 - VIEW SUMMARY OF NUTRITION PROGRESS
Current Stats: this is the detailed breakdown of your current daily intake in calories, macros, etc.
Overall Stats: this is the detailed breakdown of your weekly, month, and yearly intake
USER FLOW 5 - EXPLORE PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATIONS
Planner: the planner helps you look up recipes based on ingredients you have/prefer
Planner Recipe: tap on the specific recipe to get a detailed breakdown of the ingredients, nutrients, etc.
Planner Fridge: this is where you can view what you have in your fridge and foods you can prepare
Ingredient Planner: tapping on the chicken, for example, will bring up recipes with chicken in them
USER FLOW 6 - USE SHOPPER ASSISTANT TO SCAN FOOD ITEMS
Shopper Good: this is what the scanner will show when you hover over an item that is in your diet
Shopper to Fridge: you can take a picture of the item and chose to add it to your fridge
Shopper Bad: this is what the scanner will show when an item is not in your diet
USER FLOW 7 - VIEW DAILY STATS & NUTRITION SUGGESTIONS
Main Screen: the main watch interface shows the number of calories you’ve burned throughout the day
Alternate Screen: tapping on the main screen will show you your calories consumed for the day
Breakdown Screen: swiping up will show your detailed breakdown of macros for the day
Suggested Food: swiping up will show you a suggested meal/food to eat based on your diet
User Testing
We conducted various user testing sessions to help us understand potential areas of improvement for our app’s key interactions. We assigned the following tasks:
- You just finished working out and want to make a healthy meal with the chicken you have at home. Use the app to help you find a recipe.
- You just ate an apple. Mark that change in the app.
INTERVIEW GUIDE
- Can you tell me what you think ______ (specific page) does?
- After going through this process, do you think any parts can be simplified or improved
- Were there any points in this process where you felt confused or unsure?
- Does the navigation make sense? If not, please elaborate on what you would improve.
- How would you describe the purpose of this app in your own words?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Remove the back button on each navigation screen as it doesn’t take you back to the previous page
- Organize information based on similar categories for easier access (e.g. place current fridge items and recipes together)
- Add a calendar to the Stats page for a more convenient way to view progress on specific days
- Add full meals to the consumed section in addition to singular items
The Final Prototypes
Mobile
Smartwatch
Learnings & Insights
1. LEARNING THE CODE
One of the hardest parts of this project was overcoming the learning curve. This was the first time my teammates and I had ever coded in HTML and CSS, so there was a lot of trial and error in trying to create our website. We only 4-5 weeks to actually code our website, so learning how to code within that short time frame was difficult.
2. NEXT STEPS
Given more time and resources, we would work on developing the ac
Selected Works
