Creating Change My Plate
I’ve worked in IT for the majority of my career, and for the past few years I’ve been working for a software company that creates IT software solutions. My first role within this organization was working with the team that trains our customers immediately after purchase. In this role I got to see first-hand the types of interactions people can have with technology that can cause both intense moments of joy and those of frustration. Watching those moments of frustration is what initially got me interested in learning more about interaction design and user experience (UX). Enterprise software for IT professionals is not known for being intuitive and simplistic. Having experienced many of these products first-hand, I was interested in seeing how this class of software could be advanced and made as intuitive as so many consumer products were now becoming.
To start exploring this more, a year ago I started an online specialization on Coursera from UCSD in Interaction Design. The specialization consists of 8 courses ranging in length from 3–10 weeks each. The courses build on each other, and culmanate in a Capstone Project where you conceptualize, build, test, refine and present a functional mobile app prototype. This is the story of how my prototype for “Change My Plate” came to be.
Concept
Three project briefs around the concepts of Time, Change and Glance were given. Of these 3 briefs, the concept of Change was the one the spoke to me the most. Change is something I’ve personally gone through from changing jobs, to changing what country I live in, to changing my lifestyle. The most personal, and largest change of all of these was in changing my lifestyle though, and this is where the beginning of my concept came from. About 10 years ago I weighed over 280lbs (127kg). While I’d always been called “big boned” growing up, as I’d gotten older, poor food choices and lack of exercise had been catching up with me and I was getting larger and larger every year. Reality set in when climbing a single flight of stairs in my house was causing me to breathe heavily, and looking at a photograph of myself I could barely recognize who I was looking at. It took me 18 months to drop 100lbs (45kg). During this 18 months I was working with a personal trainer, evaluating every single calorie I was both burning and consuming, and had a laser focus on my goal of getting healthy. While this was probably one of the toughest things I’ve ever done, what comes after achieving that goal, when your health isn’t your sole focus, is what real life looks like. There’s choices to make every day. Demanding lifestyles result in impulses without thought, and then there’s social and emotional pressures that influence what we do.
For me personally, now that exercise had become part of my usual routine, keeping this going wasn’t the challenge. Eating appropriately however, was tough. With diet being generally considered the main contributor to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, I began to conceptulize the sort of app that would help encourage the right choices.
Interviews & Research
While I have some personal experience with this, and a lot of anecdotal information, the start of “Change My Plate” came from talking with other people and listening to their experiences. I based my observations on someone who struggles with making consistent healthy choices, a nutrition coach and a participant who makes healthy choices the majority of the time to try an understand the full range of motivations. A few themes started to appear from the interviews and research into other related apps. The things I decided to focus on and expand my idea into were based around the following ideas:
- People need a way to record their food in a manner that isn’t
challenging or intrusive - People need new ideas for healthy options that are different from their
routine - People need “fast food” lunch solutions that are healthier
- People need a way to track their food to meet specific goals
Storyboards & Prototypes
I’ve never been complimented on my drawing skills. That’s not about to change. That said, I am understanding the value of starting a concept outside the confines of what software allows you to do. The flexibility of communicating an idea, and being able to change an idea on the fly by anyone has its benefits!
Armed with a sharpie and a notebook, the storyboards to illustrate the use case around my focus came to be. This specific one is based around the idea of needing quick food and getting guidance to making a smarter choice. Drawing out the storyboard helped guide the use case, and put into perspective what that user was going to need to interact with in the app when it came time to build out the screens in the paper prototypes. This workflow is one that made it into the final prototype. Things like the identification of how much time the user has for lunch is shown as a user choice here, where testing and working through the concept actually resulted in the app being able to notify and guide the user more proactively with calendar integration.
After storyboards, the first paper prototypes to test out the app interactions were made. Already there were some modifications made after discussing the initial storyboards; for example, the storyboard doesn’t illustrate how you can make a different selection, which is something that was a consideration while building out the paper prototype. As the itterations continued these ideas were refined further, but I was also getting confirmation from my testers that the concept I was working on was something that was different to other fitness apps, calorie trackers, restaurant recommendation apps, or recipe apps.
Build, Test, Build, Test…
After the paper prototypes, getting feedback from peers and some of the people I’d initially interviewed, the evolving shape of my app was coming together. All of this has been distilled into a final point of view statement:
Most people do want to select more healthy foods to eat, but need to be better empowered with the opportunity to do so.
Going back and reviewing the research I’d gathered so far, I decided to focus the app prototype around the idea of empowerment. This meant integrating the app into the end user’s lifestyle as seamlessly as possible. Rather than having the first run of the app bring the user right into the interface, I made a choice to guide the user through customization first.
Enabing this customization up front gives the opportunity to have a very personal experience. This gives the app the ability to make smart, timely and appropriate suggestions. All of this takes the challenge and intrusiveness that had been reported in my initial interviews out of the way.
It was while referencing all the feedback, and building out the prototype that the name for the app evolved. The app was addressing 2 of the largest challenges I’d discovered: Changing the food selection when it’s time to eat at a point in time, and planning and changing the food selection for scheduled meals. Circling back to the initial design brief of Change, the name Change my Plate seemed a natural fit.
The final feature set of Change My Plate is the following:
- Recipe and weekly advanced meal planning that fits with your personal goals and dietary requirements
- Grocery lists, or delivery of all the ingredients required for your weekly menu plan
- Integration with your calendar for mealtime reminders, time to start cooking reminders and evaluating free time for lunch options
- Restaurant menu item suggestions near your current location
- Automatic journal logging of planned meals and lunch selections
- Positive reinforcement on making healthier selections
Reflection
Now I’m at the end of my year working on the Interaction Design Specialization, I’ve certainly gained a lot more understanding around how even what seems like a simple choice can completely change an end users’ understanding of their interaction with the application.
While initially intimidating showing the original storyboards and prototypes to others, their feedback ended up being invaluable when it came to building the final prototype. While all feedback came with constructive feedback, I also found that there was a lot of very positive comments also.
“I know a lot of people my age who work long hours and are super busy and end up ordering a lot of pizza or other less than healthy choices from UberEats. Getting the forced choice of healthy options is definitely something I think would appeal to my peers”
Probably the most rewarding piece of feedback came from a user in the usertesting.com usability study who indicated that she couldn’t wait for the app to be launched so she could use it and recommend it to her friends and family. Maybe some day we can make that happen, annoymous user tester!
