foodylife

Forget about Calories. Eat Mindfully. Balance your Diet.

MY ROLE
Market Research, UI/UX Design, Front/Back End
TEAM SIZE
Only Me (Supervised by Dr. Anne Hsu)
Timeline
Sep 2017 - Apr 2018
Foodylife

My Individual Contribution

This is a solo project that I started for myself. Everything from the designs to the idea are my own.

The Problem

Nowadays people pay little attention to what they eat and often eat unhealthy food.

And... calories counting is not a good idea.
People make better dietary choices when they eat mindfully, and not pressured by calorie counting.
‍
- Westenhoefer, 1999.

-> So we need an app for user to improve self-consciousness about eating habits visually and mindfully.

Research

In order to find the more embedded issues with the current food tracking app experience, we dove deeper into the market and did the following steps to spot the pain points:

Competitive Analysis to find the market needs
Survey to collect user needs
Interview with nutritionists to find out the way they treat their patients.
Competitive Analysis
Interview with Professionals
Survey
Study

Wireframe

An initial wireframe of the overall UI was designed and used to analyse any missing functions and to test the flow.

1st Prototype

I began to create the first hi-fi prototype using Sketch after finalizing the flow and the components in the main screens.

Usability Testing

I recruited seven testers in total to do the usability testing. They were asked to attend a face-to-face session for an interview and complete several tasks using the application. The tasks included showing them some pictures of food and asking that they record the correct portion of it using the app.

Final Design

Testing On Real Product

A month later, after we built our first version of the app,
I recruited 2 nutritionists together with 6 users to test the app. They were invited to test the app for a duration of 3-7 days and fill out a survey to evaluate the app's performance. We also used a few analytical tools to track the user's behaviours.

Takeaways

I started this project with only a vague idea and started to learn every skill to turn this into reality. I mastered the UI/UX design, iOS development by taking online courses and was fortunate that I could accomplish this project.

Main Challenge
Since I am the only one who is going to research, design and implement the entire project, I found it difficult to control the execution process. I started the project with design thinking methodology, by discovering and define user needs, but everything gets more complicated when design, testing, and implementation meet together.

Hopefully, with the aid from my supervisor, I was able to forced myself managing the project by combining design thinking, lean UX and agile methodology. I continuously ask for feedback to generate new ideas and test new concepts quickly.

At the same time, I follow the agile process to break down the tasks into pieces and develop them one by one.In summary, the biggest takeaway from this entire project is the importance of project management, the way of combining agile with design thinking, and the power of constantly testing. In my case, not only the two usability tests but also chatting with friends/nutritionists led to so many drastic changes that improved the app. Without these insights, the app wouldn't have been able to see obvious pain points and additional features

Some Achievements
Reached 10000 downloads in April. 2019
Ranked #3 in Taiwan, #7 in Israel, #8 in Thailand
Ranked Top 100 in 16 Countries
Ranked Top 500 in 52 Countries  
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2020 Ben Shih