PROJECT OVERVIEW
Peachy is a conceptual, interactive web-app prototype that helps users identify and address food sensitivities.
DURATION
6 months
MY ROLE
UX / UI Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Miro
Marvel
Milanote
Google Suite
OBJECTIVE
Design a responsive app for users with food sensitivities to meet with a nutritionist, find recipes, and track their diet and symptoms.
THE PROBLEM
Many individuals struggle with health issues related to their diet, but don’t know how to address them.
Navigating health insurance, finding a nutritionist, and getting personalized nutritional advice are daunting tasks. Even once these things are achieved, individuals need to be able to track their diet and symptoms to see if their treatment plan is making a difference.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS: Are there any apps already helping solve this problem?
I researched apps designed to help individuals with food sensitivities, and found three main competitors: Cara Care, Fooducate, and Gut Health.
I found some common features between the three apps: Food tracking, Symptom Tracking, Visualizing trends, and Finding and saving recipes. I was looking for the option of meeting with a nutritional professional, since this is incredibly relevant to nutritional health, but didn't find any apps that included this feature. I also found that most of the apps did not execute symptom tracking and trend visualization in an intuitive or effective way.
Although some food sensitivity apps exist, there are none that offer effective tracking and professional nutrition advice.
USER RESEARCH
What is the most helpful for real users struggling with these health issues?
SURVEY: Are users satisfied with their current tools?
Now that I had identified a gap in the market, I wanted to see if real users were actually interested in these features. I conducted a survey within my personal network to see what tools people had already tried for their food sensitivities, and why they did or didn't find them effective.
I found that my participants had tried going to a doctor, tracking their diet on paper or an existing diet app, and following specific diets, but almost half were not satisfied with their results. I also asked if participants would be interested in an app that allowed them to track their conditions and meet with a nutritional expert, and there was overwhelming interest.
Users were interested in an app that could provide effective, simple, and affordable ways to 1) track their diet and symptoms, and 2) meet with a nutritional expert.
INTERVIEWS: What are users' key goals, motivations, and frustrations?
After confirming interest in the app, I scheduled interviews with my survey participants to collect more in-depth, qualitative information.
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What have you tried to address your dietary health concerns?
What has been successful?
What have your frustrations been?
What features would you find useful in a nutrition app?
Results
After interviewing five individuals and reviewing 3.5 hours of interview recordings, I found the trends below. When compiled and looked at from a birds-eye view, I found that these motivations, frustrations, and their overarching goals aligned with the nutritional expert, tracking and trend view, and recipe feature.
Participants' goals, frustrations, and motivations aligned with the features of Nutritional Expert, Recipes, and Tracking & Viewing Trends.
USER PERSONAS
Who are we designing for?
To help me stay focused on designing for my target audience, I gathered the information from user interviews and used it to create my user personas. Susan encapsulates the goals, needs, and characteristics that appeared most often in my interviews, making her my primary persona.
USER JOURNEYS: How can we make tasks more intuitive for our users?
I created user journeys to explore how each persona might go about completing a task on the app. This helped me see how I could maximize the experience for different kinds of users.
Takeaways: Peachy should offer an option for users to pay for coaching sessions individually & offer coach recommendations based on onboarding quiz.
WIREFRAMES & PROTOTYPE
After conducting a Card Sort and creating the Site Map to lay out the structure of the app, I moved on to visual design. I sketched out wireframes for a few key screens from each feature, and then translated them into low-fidelity prototypes.
USABILITY TESTING
Do the layout and navigation make sense to users?
Before I developed my screens into high-fidelity prototypes, I set up 6 remote, moderated tests with 6 different participants to test Peachy’s usability.
Tasks
Observations
Because my prototype was still low-mid fidelity, participants were confused by the lack of information on the screens, and had trouble knowing where to click. They also were not sure if all their changes were being saved.
Errors
Users clicked the wrong icons for most of the tasks, because they were ambiguous and unlabeled. They were confused by the filter icon, the coach icon, the logging icon, and the recipe icon.
Revisions
DESIGN SYSTEM
Ensuring consistency
With my usability issues resolved, I took a deeper dive into the visual design and branding of Peachy. I created the following design system to ensure consistency and make sure that the language and iconography were staying true to the purpose and target population of the app.
Because Peachy is an app meant to encourage users on their journey to better health, I wanted the design to be clean, bright, and upbeat. I used warm colors in my photos and UI elements, and a clean, rounded font for my text.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
After finalizing the design system, I implemented it throughout my app. The resulting final prototype can be seen below.
