My Fitness Pal: A UX Case Study
Imagine, you’re slouched over your last bites of an overpriced salad you’ve been indebted to every day this week. You get the same 30-minute lunch break you take every day, at the same time, on the same park bench where you watch the same old lady pick up her dog’s poop while simultaneously yelling at a pack of schoolboys for jaywalking. Minus the occasional change in takeout, your lunches never veer from their predictable pattern.
According to John M. Grohol, Psy.D., we as humans are creatures of habit. If you have ever had to lose a few pounds for an event or vacation or have curiously tried a diet your friend swears by then you know this is not a test for the faint of heart. This is why there are so many apps and plans and coaches that people will spend a fortune on just to gain a little help breaking in their new habits.
In 2005 Albert Lee needed to lose a few pounds before a wedding he was set to attend and after exhausting his will to write down every single thing he ate in a day, with his brother Mike he developed My Fitness Pal. My Fitness Pal is a mobile application for iOS and Android users who are seeking change or want to gain a better understanding of how their eating habits and exercise routines are affecting their lifestyle. The app was an immediate success and in 2015 the brothers sold My Fitness Pal to Under Armour for 475 million dollars. It currently has 180 million dedicated users and over 500,000 five star reviews.
Despite its quintessential reputation and beaming success, there are a few shortcomings in its current user experience. As creatures of habit, we gravitate towards familiarity. Keeping tabs on our health and fitness should feel as natural as the acts themselves.
This is where I come in. This solo project was for a UX graduate class where I spent 6 weeks diving deep into every corner of the My Fitness Pal iOS app. Through desk research, competitive analysis, interviews, affinity clustering, user personas, epics, and user stories I was able to establish the groundwork for meaningful solutions based on repetitive pain points uncovered in the process.
What’s In It For You?
Everyone that signs up for My Fitness Pal gains access to a tailored fitness blog, a community of members who are setting similar goals, a comprehensive food database for logging meals, daily reminders, weight tracking, progress data, and the ability to track exercise. For an extra $79.99/year, premium members can track their water intake, custom their macronutrient goals, and log timestamps of when they eat each meal.
There Are Plenty Of Fish In The Sea
Calorie-tracking apps are not a scarce commodity and the competition is hot. I started my quest by conducting competitive analysis and a SWOT matrix (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). This allowed me to see what competitors are doing well and where My Fitness Pal has an advantage in the market. This also later helped me guide my interview questions so I could gauge user experience against the competition.
- Noom is My Fitness Pal’s largest competitor with an abundance of success stories that come with a hefty price tag ($59/month). Noom is a health and lifestyle app that features individualized workout and meal plans to meet your specific goals. Noom separates itself from its competitors with its evidence-based researched tools, community accountability, 1:1 support from certified health coaches, and their unique traffic light system to rank foods based on nutrients and calories.
- Lose It was launched in 2008 as a weight loss and calorie counting app providing users with the tools they need to reach specific goals. Lose it has an advantage over its top competitor, My Fitness Pal, with unique food recognition software. All you have to do is snap a picture of your plate and the app will begin generating food items for you to choose from. Lose it also prides itself in its simplistic, easy to use design.
- Cronometer is a weight loss and lifestyle app/website that focuses on calorie restriction and optimal nutrition established in 2005. Cronometer separates itself from competitors with insurance that their nutritional data is curated from verified, accurate sources but falls short on positive reviews due to their overwhelming amount of ads on their free membership. Cronometer is one of the only weight loss and lifestyle apps that offers a corporate membership for schools and hospitals as well as a professional membership for health coaches.
- Here you can see the full SWOT matrix and competitive analysis.
Finding Users
Before I could do anything I had to figure out who is actually using My Fitness Pal. Through desktop research, I discovered that most of My Fitness Pal users fall between the ages of 18–45 and can be classified into 2 different user types, long-term and short-term users.
- Long-term users are those who are known for being health-conscious and have a reputation for tracking their food and exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle. These users have been using My Fitness Pal for longer than six months and set numerous, evolving goals over time.
- Short-term users are those who need to lose a few pounds for an event (wedding, vacation, etc.) and do not plan on continuous use of the app once a specific goal is met. These users do not plan on using My Fitness Pal for longer than six months.
Methodology
In order to find users, I created a screener, posted it to 5 different Facebook groups, and received interest from ten potential candidates. I used the interview screener as a way to ensure each individual met the necessary criteria for the interview and as a way to separate users into types. The screener included questions about usage, demographics, and what type of user they associate themselves with. Of the ten individuals who completed the screener, seven were actually interviewed. Below are some of the responses from the screener.
Interviews
- 3 Short-term users
- 4 Long-term users
Interviews were recorded, held either in person or through zoom, and lasted 30–45 minutes in length. Each interview consisted of a series of questions I prepared ahead of time in order to gain empathy and a clear perspective of each user’s unique experience. The structure of the interview was based on the features of My Fitness Pal and that users’ unique experiences.
My Fitness Pal Kool-aid
After conducting 6 interviews I came to the conclusion that there is some flavor of My Fitness Pal Kool-aid out there I don’t know about. Despite every interview being full of critiques and suggestions for improving, the level of satisfaction and dedication to the app was uncanny. Almost like when someone criticizes a family member and prefaces the statement with, “I love them but…” Is it because My Fitness Pal is owned by Under Armour and everyone loves Under Armour? Is it because the app is the most senior of its kind? While I still haven’t figured out the answer, I was able to gain valuable insight into areas that these dedicated users feel need improvement.
Results And Analysis
The number one difference between short-term and long-term users is the amount of time they spend logging per week. Other than this detail, I was surprised by the amount of overlapping pain points and needs across the two user types.
- 100% Short term users stated they never miss a day when logging meals.
- 25% of Long-term users state they never miss a day when logging meal and 75% log between 4–6 days per week.
“There are way too many steps to add something as simple as an apple and even when I do finally get to the list of apples there are about 600 to choose from all with different nutrients.” — Katie, short-term user
“I hate when I accidentally click on a link from the blog or an advertisement and it takes me out of the app. The chance of me going back into the app and not getting distracted by something else on my phone is not very high.”- Demi, long-term user
3 Major Pain Points:
- Make finding and adding food a priority. It takes way too many steps.
- Categorize frequent foods to make it faster to add repeat foods.
- Get rid of or move the blog from the homepage
So Who Is Actually Using The App?
After analyzing results from user interviews I created a user persona for 3 different types of users. The assumed first two, short-term and long-term users and an added third that falls into both categories but also had enough users to form a persona of their own; Users who are focused on physical performance and fitness competitions. Also known as The Gym Rat. Creating user personas helped me deeper understand, goals, experiences, needs, and behaviors.
So What’s The Problem?
We’ve established that My Fitness Pal is far from perfect and has a lot of room for growth but through all my discovery there is one problem that kept surfacing:
How might we redesign the My Fitness Pal app for short and long-term users so they are able to log meals with efficiency and ease?
Epics and User Stories
Epics and stories are important tools that help us understand pieces of a puzzle or the whole picture when designing a system. An epic is a broader category that holds many functions within itself and a story is what makes the epic whole. Like a sandwich; without the filling its just bread. I created one epic and two stories for each user type.
Long-Term User Epic and Stories
Epic: As a long-term user… I want to… preload my meals when I meal prep so that I can add to my food diary with one click.
Story: As a long-term user…I want to… have a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack button so I can choose from my preloaded meals.
Story: As a long-term user…I want to… be able to list days of the week for easy selection when adding to my food diary.
Short-Term User Epic and Stories
Epic: As a short-term user…I want to connect to a device so that I can stay motivated.
Story: As a short-term user…I want to save a device to my homepage so that I can access it quickly.
Story: As a short-term user…I want to write a description of my device so that I can choose which one to connect without wasting time.
Gym Rat User Epic and Stories
Epic: As a gym rat…I want to add a workout so I can track my progress
Story: As a gym rat…I want to categorize my workouts so that I can keep track of muscle groups and prevent fatigue.
Story: As a gym rat…I want to look back on calories burned from workouts so I can meal prep with accurate calories.
Insert Tape Two
If this were the VHS of Titanic this is where you would insert tape two. Moving forward with this project the first step would be to refine more epics and user stories derived from my research that will lead me directly into wireframing and eventually prototypes. Talking to actual users throughout this process has been and will continue to be an invaluable resource. After developing a solid research foundation and talking to real-life users I feel confident I will be able to produce change worthy solutions in the next phases.
The moral of the story is My Fitness Pal is a great app with a dedicated user population but as George Strait says,
“There’s a difference in livin’ and livin’ well.”
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear any feedback!