Native APP, Saúde e Fitness
WiseBites
Uma app de receitas e planeamento de refeições dedicado à alimentação saudável e com acesso direto a nutricionistas certificados.
(Case Study ainda não traduzido)
Role
Duração
July 2023
Equipa
Deliverables
Aplicações
Problem 😓
Goal 🏆
Goal 🏆
How might we effectively communicate the importance of balanced nutrition and the potential benefits of consulting a nutritionist to individuals who are exploring healthier lifestyle options?
User Research 🔎
The first step of the design process involved identifying our primary competitors. Upon initial research, there was an overwhelming amount of results. Focus was narrowed to three niche apps with similar functionalities and two market leaders in the health & fitness category. Feature competitive analysis revealed anticipated features and potential market opportunities.
Concurrently, we sought to understand our users’ thoughts and behaviours when deciding what to cook and eat on a daily basis and to assess their willingness to engage with a certified nutritionist for consultation as a premium membership benefit.
Surveys & Interviews
Eighty respondents answered the survey with interesting results. Almost all enjoy cooking simple meals and are willing to cook at home every day. Most had healthy eating in mind and tried to balance the nutritional aspects of their meals during the day, but did not strictly go for calorie counting, except if they were following some dietary plan. They do meal planning to some extent and overall decide on what to cook based on what’s available on the fridge or what they bought on their last visit to the supermarket.
The five interview sessions took into account both men and women aged above 35, living in different European countries and with different eating habits. The interviews took approximately 35 minutes and included topics to get to the core of what users do and think regarding meal preparation, meal planning and overall health goals.
User Highlights
After analysing all the generated data, this was the most relevant information for decision-making in creating the app.
Prefer simple cooking
Cooks everyday
Cooks few times a week
Willing to cook at home when following a plan
Having nutritional information about food/meals
Access to a nutritionist
As a standout and premium feature, we thought about making possible to consult with a Nutritionist inside the app to be able to get expert advice and guidance. We asked our users if they would consider this to be helpful, and 60% actually agreed to the idea. Other options, like advanced nutritional tracking and recipes with videos, came around 35%, so they were not scraped, but at this point, put aside for future updates.
Building empathy
Creating a persona that would represent the majority of the app users was a tough challenge. Basically, anyone with the goal of healthy eating could be a good prospective user… Resorting back to the user interview answers and the affinity diagram insights and analysing the little details that were most in common between all, resulted in defining Ruth (Financial advisor, 38).
- User Journey
Ruth, has a busy work schedule, wants to lose some weight but doesn’t have enough knowledge on nutrition to be able to do it by herself. She has already tried some of the most used apps on the market, but has found them too confusing and with too many features she doesn’t need. She discovers WiseBites, and becomes interested in the possibility to consult with a nutritionist inside the app.
Health-conscious individuals need to find a way to change to a healthier lifestyle through simplified cooking, personalized meal planning, and access to nutritional expertise because they want practical solutions that align with their busy lives and cooking preferences.
Defining the MVP of the product
With problem statement, persona and user journey defined, it was time to write down the characteristics of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), before proceeding to the ideate stage. With the help of MoSCoW map, features gathered from earlier research stages were distributed, and a final MVP Statement was written down to guide further development.
MVP Statement 👌
The goal of the WiseBites app, at the bare minimum, is to help health-conscious individuals to focus on how to cook healthy quick recipes and have clear and practical nutritional details that support their dietary goals. By knowing what is available, the app further aims to encourage users to lead a healthier lifestyle by being able to connect to a qualified nutritionist for more personalised goals.
MVP Statement 👌
The goal of the WiseBites app, at the bare minimum, is to help health-conscious individuals to focus on how to cook healthy quick recipes and have clear and practical nutritional details that support their dietary goals. By knowing what is available, the app further aims to encourage users to lead a healthier lifestyle by being able to connect to a qualified nutritionist for more personalised goals.
From idea to prototype 💡
Ideation stage kicked off by outlining the user flow for the happy path (the only one required for the project), that starts with our user answering a survey that will calculate her daily calorie intake, and signing up for premium. The user would then explore the app, looking for recipes and predetermined meal plans, where we assume some usage days have passed. Lastly, the user ends up scheduling a video chat with one of the available nutritionists.
Based on this journey, low-fidelity paper sketches were created and used to do concept testing with four users. The results were mostly positive and the minor changes that needed to be made, were pushed to the mid-fidelity wireframe since they were not structural.
Low fidelity sketches
Mid Fidelity Prototype
In order to save time later in the project when building the high-fidelity screens and to get as much feedback on the design decisions as early as possible, a decision was made to build a detailed mid-fidelity prototype that would closely resemble the final product. Everything was already laid out as it would be on the high-fidelity screens, spaced using an 8pt soft grid, and also most of the screen elements were created as components so that they could be reused.
Usability Testing
Usability testing was conducted with five users, that resulted in a few changes across different screens.
Visual Design 🍪
The first step into visual design was writing down the brand attributes and creating a mood board for the MVP based on them and also the previously gathered research insights. Additionally, initial research was revisited to conduct a visual competitive analysis on selected competitors, to look for common characteristics and usability patterns. This enabled offering a product that would have innovative elements to make it distinguishable but that, at the same time, maintain a sense of familiarity to ensure ease of use.
The why’s behind design choices
Looking through the long list of health and wellness, it was possible to detect some common patterns. Most, used either green or orange as primary/brand colour and single sans seriffed typefaces. Initial designs shifted from this, but colours were competing too much for attention in relation to the many colourful pictures of food in each screen. Explorations were made with different shades of green and orange but to not be too close to other apps already in the market, but that would still maintain a visually pleasing arrangement. Choice settled on a medium to dark shade of teal green, a colour associated with nature, growth, and freshness. For secondary/accent, the inspiration was set on the many colours of nature and food, so it made sense to search for a complementary colour. Choice went for a bright shade of orange-yellow, so we could break the overall ‘greenish’ look with a strong contrast also representing the vibrancy of real world colours.
When choosing the typeface, the choice was between going all sans serif or combining a sans seriffed body font with big seriffed titles. The first option was the most common of all analysed apps, it was the safe choice, and it gave the app an easy-to-read and contemporary style, but…
Research had already showed that our users were mostly women, aged between 30 and 50, so there was a sense of lacking a touch of elegance and sophistication that would resonate with this target demographic. Also, it would be an opportunity to have a visually different app. Although one of the competitors uses the same type of font combination, the overall look is more sober and classic, with the use of darker shades and the desire was for the app to look elegant, but at the same time feel vibrant and energetic to appeal to a broader range of users.
After some typeface explorations taking inspiration from cookbook covers, the decision settled on ‘DM Serif Display’ for the titles, a font from Google, known for its graceful and refined characteristics, which added the subtle elegance feature sought. For body font, ‘Proxima Nova’ was chosen, a highly popular and versatile sans-serif typeface, designed by Mark Simonson, that offers excellent readability and is characterised by its clean, modern, and friendly appearance.
Final testing
Four new usability tests were conducted on the high-fidelity prototype and at the same time, the users did desirability testing using the Microsoft Reaction Card technique.
Having previously tested a detailed mid-fidelity, results were not so meaningful now, and mostly revolved around small details or things that users wanted to see or do, but that weren’t part of our ‘happy path’ prototype. Still, one significant change was the inclusion of an additional confirmation message before the users did the final submission of the selected day for the nutritionist video chat.
“Easy to use” and “intuitive” came out as the highest-rated factors among our desirability testers. This feedback shows the significance of these elements in the user interface and highlights the users preference for a design that is user-friendly and simple. Although it was intended additional user testing, they could not be scheduled before the final presentation deadline.
High Fidelity Prototype
You can interact with the prototype clicking in the image on the right or use this link to open in a new tab.
- User Journey 'Happy Path'
Ruth opens the app and goes through the on-boarding questionnaire, setting weight loss as her goal. She creates an account with her Facebook login and afterwards is offered the premium plan, but decides to skip it for now.
She explores the app and looks for recipes she can cook later in the day. Furthermore, she sees she can also add it to a meal plan.
A few days pass, and happy with the recipes so far, chooses to browse the predetermined meal plans, but her lack of nutritional knowledge makes it hard to know which one is best for her. Having the benefit to talk to a nutritionist in-app, she decides to become a member and book her first consultation, that will allow her to have a personal tailored meal plan that will help her achieve her weight loss goal.
You can interact with the prototype clicking in the image below or use this link to open in a new tab.
Learnings & Shout-outs 👏
Although this was a ‘fictional client’ project, it was fascinating giving the broad scope which challenged us to address various different aspects all the time. Every decision opened up multiple possible paths, and keeping on track sometimes proved to be tougher than expected. The guiding principle that consistently grounded us was ‘keep it simple,’ and it proved to be the key to resolve all complexities that surfaced.
For next steps, it would be very interesting to pair with a Subject-matter Expert to help test the MVP and ‘fill in the gaps’ for further iterations. Also, develop different user paths that would open other functionalities and add new features, for example, more advanced filtering options or video recipes.
As a closing note, a huge thank you to my fellow teammate on this project, Julie Haley, who’s pragmatic approach, quick decision-making and refined sense of humour made working on the project a breeze and contributed to its success.
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