Design a digital solution helping underweight users gain weight
By encourage users to eat one more thing than yesterday
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15 weeks, fall 2023
Offline
Product Designer
Overview
Problem
For underweight user, it can be challenging to consume large amounts of food consistently over an extended period.
Goals
Provide a better experience for underweight user to gain weight by consuming more food.
To achieve this, I employed UX research methodologies to analyze the limitations of current weight gain apps and to deeply understand user needs, resulting in the extraction of two pivotal insights.
Insight 1
Users prefer not to spend time logging their calorie intake.
Insight 2
It’s hard for users to stick to high calorie goals.
SOLUTION BRIEF
How might we encourage users to eat one more thing than yesterday?
Below are two line charts comparing the calorie intake goals required by other apps with those of my product.
final outcome
Problem Analysis
Product Goal
Provide a better experience for underweight user to gain weight by consuming more food.
Research Goal
Identify the challenges faced by underweight users when trying to gain weight through increased food intake.
User thought
Insights
Insight 1
Users prefer not to spend time logging their calorie intake.
Insight 2
It’s hard for users to stick to high calorie goals.
Ideation
Brainstorming
Using insights from my research, I've developed a matrix with complexity and time as its axes to facilitate brainstorming.
Criteria for idea Selection
User Needs
No more calorie tracking
User need for eliminating the time spent on calorie tracking.
Easy to maintain
User need for consistently consuming larger quantities of food.
Eat more food healthily
User need for helping them eat more food without feeling nauseous.
Ease of Implementation:
The idea should be simple and straightforward from a technical standpoint.
It should rely on well-established, proven technologies rather than complex, cutting-edge solutions.
Innovation
Introduce a new approach, concept, or solution that hasn't been seen before in the market or industry.
Final Design Question
How might we encourage users to eat one more thing than yesterday?
Maintain user’s main meal routine and slowly increasing the quantity of food in side meals.
Key features
Key feature 1
Helps users eat one more thing than yesterday.
This case study’s focus
Key feature 2
Recommends the best foods for effective weight gain.
Key features
Prototype
User Flow
Flow of eating one more thing than yesterday
Storyboard
Information Architecture
Wireframe
User test
Challenges
After completing the user testing, I identified two challenges:
Challenge 1
How to convey the app's key feature of eating one more thing than yesterday to users?
Challenge 2
How can I help users efficiently find the food they want to eat?
Challenge 1
How to convey the app's key feature of eating one more thing than yesterday to users?
Related page
Problem
User don’t get the key feature.
user feedback
Why?
Lack of key Information
There is a lack of clear information to inform users about the product's core objective.
The UI is not intuitive enough
The UI does not effectively communicate the core objective of the product.
My critique notes
further feedback
Problem
Not 100% clear.
There are still elements that do not assist users in achieving their goal.
What?
The bordered boxes.
Why I added bordered boxes?
For exceeding the task goal.
I aim to encourage users to challenge themselves by eating one more than their goal for today.
However
It’s not user’s current goal.
The current goal is about checking the number of additional food items users need to eat today. They can challenge themselves with more after completing today's task.
revision
Challenge 2
How can I help users efficiently find the food they want to eat?
Related pages
Problems
Icons
Hard to recognize the icons as categories.
Interaction Design
Current interaction is not quite intuitive for them.
IA
User need more clean and informative IA to help them find the food.
ICONS Iteration
Interaction Design Iteration
Version 1
Version 2
IA Iteration
Version 1
Design Decision
Incorporate a 'My Favorites' section into the categories
Add subcategories focused on weight gain.
Version 2
final outcome
prototype
Next step
Developing a key feature that recommends the best foods for effective weight gain.
To address the possibility that self-selected extra foods may not be ideal for weight gain, the plan includes the development of a recommendation feature. This feature will be aimed at guiding users towards more effective food choices to support their weight gain goals.