Case Study: No Sweat — Making Healthy Easy

Description

In the United States, 68.8 percent of adults age 20 or over are considered overweight or obese. Obesity is related to poor mental health, reduced quality of life, and is a leading cause of death. Though diet and exercise go hand in hand, all the exercise in the world will not help you lose weight if your diet is not on point. In this design challenge, my teammates and I aimed to address ways individuals could take control of their health, weight, and overall quality of life by diet alone.

Role: UX Designer

For: DevMountain Student Developers

Date: 02/15/17

Type: Mobile app, iOS

URL: https://www.invis.io/JDAE8VBMH

Research. Research. Research.

No Sweat was created by myself and my two partners, Danielle and Corey. While we did many things as a team, I will be highlighting my specific responsibilities and contributions.

This project was exciting from the very beginning. Between my two teammates and I, we had a personal trainer, a Tae Kwon Do master, and a military veteran (I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere with those three individuals in it…) making our expertise in the arena of health and fitness quite high. The first move was to sit down and make a list of assumptions about target users and their attitudes towards things like food and health. After initial brainstorming, additional input was needed so an interview schedule was drawn up in order to conduct a number of in-person interviews. The goal was to ask thoughtful questions that would uncover users’ relationships between diet, exercise, time, and motivations. Based on information gathered from the interviews, I created the following persona:

“… just tell me what to eat!”

Define

The Challenge: Present users with diet-related information that is easy to understand, implement, maintain, and track.

With research wrapped up and the challenge identified, the next step was putting together a creative brief to really clarify goals and success indicators. The persona and creative brief together acted as a North Star influencing each and every decision moving forward.

Ideate

Ideation…where rubber met road. The days in this phase were marked with extensive rounds of story mapping, 10x10 sketching, and wireframing. It was during this iterative process that needed solutions began to emerge and the overall vision was really dialed in.

There were a few different paths explored during this process, some better than others. Initially it was tempting to want to create solutions for EVERY pain point users indicated. That meant including things like: ingredients for each meal, allowing the user to create a grocery list from those items, bookmarking favorite recipes, having a searchable recipe index, incorporating a social aspect so that users could motivate friends and family…. in short, SCOPE CREEP! With all those considerations swirling in mind, this is what MVP 1.0 looked like:

After pursuing that course of action for a bit, it soon became quite clear that the most useful solutions were being diluted and that we had lost sight of the reason we chose this project in the first place: making healthy simple. It was at this point that I recalled my days as a personal trainer, constantly being told by my clients “I have to eat things that aren’t good for me because I have kids and that means we eat at places like Sonic and McDonald’s”, etc. I used to issue the challenge to them that if they gave me ANY restaurant menu, I could at least tell them what the healthiest option at each place would be. Just because you’re at a place like McDonald’s doesn’t mean you have to eat a double double cheeseburger with super-sized fries and a bottomless Coke (you’d be surprised at the justifications)! I called it the “Eat This, Not That” exercise.

When I recalled this experience, I knew that I had stumbled onto the key to our scope creep problem. No Sweat needed to make it easy for any person to make healthy choices no matter where they were, by simply providing users with the healthiest option. In application, this meant that if they were eating at home, the app would supply them with a generous-but-not-overwhelming amount of healthy suggestions for each meal. Conversely, if they were eating out they would be able to search for the desired restaurant and be told which entree(s) were the healthiest. With that epiphany, No Sweat was ready to move forward.

Design

Visual design is where the project comes to life; where Pinocchio becomes a real boy. It’s where the magic happens.

Unfortunately, there was no “magic wand” in this scenario. In its stead — the style guide. Font pairings and colors were chosen using word association and similar methods to make sure every detail rightly conveyed the app’s personality. Words like “fresh”, “organic”, and “natural” heavily influenced decisions. Symbols, layouts and many other details were intentionally chosen to give a clean, simple, “easy” feel to the overall experience. The design is present, yet subtle, allowing the features and functionality to remain front and center.

Test it Once; Twice is Nice

Turns out taking tests aren’t quite so painful when there are no wrong answers, only better ones. By getting a prototype into the hands of users we were able to make changes that better served our audience and helped us deliver and delight.

Eat This, Not That

As mentioned above, the core of the app is providing recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. These recipes include basic metrics (calories, protein, fats, and carbohydrates) that can be tracked when the recipe is “added” to the user’s daily log. Users can also create a meal or item of their own and add it to the appropriate category.

If a user prefers to eat out, the app will allow them to search restaurants based on their location. The restaurant chosen will then yield two entreé suggestions: the two healthiest items on the menu. They can then select one of the suggested entrees and add it to their daily log to track its metrics.

The app also includes sections to chart progress, set goals, receive awards, and view a visual timelapse of their improvements.

Conclusion

I grew so much over the course of this project. Learning to empathize with users through meaningful research, creating artifacts that served as anchors, utilizing quick, iterative processes and techniques, getting designs in the hands of users, and improving on that feedback helped deliver a product I am proud of. The problems solved and the progress made from start to finish was extremely satisfying and left my teammates and I with just what we had hoped for: a healthy appetite.