season — Eat better
The health and wellness industry has been experiencing immense disruption due to advancements in technology.
Today’s consumers are embracing wearable technologies and other activity-tracking products more than ever before. The omnipresence of the smartphone has spawned a massive market for mobile health and wellness apps. Healthcare-related mobile apps are becoming popular at an astonishing speed, as indicated by the fact that 69% of US smartphone owners track at least one health indicator using them.
The institute defines wellness as an active process through which people try to improve or maintain their well-being. But they noticed that despite the vast availability of personal metrics and health apps, people continue to struggle.
The brief
The Wellness Institute wants to explore how they can leverage technology to help people live a healthier life and propose a new mobile app designed to support wellness by eating.
Before the industrial era of mass feeding,… Humans knew how to feed himself instinctively and went towards what he needed.
Reflexes lost in the middle of the tempting supermarket shelves, in front of pubs… A new rhythm of life where work and travelling times are often too long, make you go to the simplest and quickest and the: frozen food, fast food,…, have taken over.
Why is eating healthy so important ?
Because eating is a physiological need (Maslow pyramid), it’s a motor for staying in shape, it prevents certains illnesses (cardiovascular, cholesterol,…) and it’s preserving our five organs in charge of our ecosystem : skin, lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines.
But does eating well really play a role in our well-being ?
To answer all those questions, I realized a private study with a survey on 390 people.
So, yes for 73,5% food takes a role in our wellness, and when we asked them “why ?” the main answers was :
“Our stomach is our second brain, when we don’t feel good in the stomach we don’t feel good in the head.”
“Healthy mind in a healthy body.”
Does that mean they like cooking ?
For 70% of them, yes they like cooking with seasonal products and for 12% they don’t like cooking but they still use seasonal products.
So, the seasonality of the products will be taken into account.
Take a look around the market
We have a lot of food application and we can identify 4 main categories :
- Informatives application : Yuka, buy or not, fruits & légumes de saisons…
- Diets application : My fitness pal, Foodvisor, WW…
- For recipes : Etiquetable, Plant Jemmer, Kitchen stories…
- Box meal delivered : Frichti, Little green box, Kitchen daily…
But do they really use an application to help them to eat better ?
No… for 66,1% of them… but why ?
Because they associated food applications with diet, they are too focused on calories binding and they don’t want to control what they eat.
So, who are we going to target?
For better understanding our target we can add demographics datas.
89,1% who replied to the questionnaire are womens with an equal share between 18 and + 65 years old.
In the resume it’s a transgenerational woman.
We can divided in two targets :
- A woman between 18/30 yo without kids.
- 30/ + 65 yo with family and kids.
They hear, see and do the same things and have the same pain-points :
- Recipes use too many unnecessary products.
- Too much information is demotivating.
- Lack of time and ideas for cooking.
And they have differents insights and motivations :
Louise, 25 yo :
“ I would like to learn how to eat healthily while respecting the seasonality of the products, but I don’t want to impose strict constraints on myself so that it remains a pleasure.”
Sophie, 50 yo :
“ I would like to find quick, simple and balanced recipes for my family but I don’t have time to think of new ideas every night.”
Now we can have our problem statement :
People need a way to find new, simple and quick recipes for everyday and which teach new associations of tastes with seasonal products.
Because they want to eat healthily without being self- imposed so that it remains a pleasure and not an obsession.
Ideation
After some crazy-8, I have prioritized functionalities with the Moscow method.
What must have functionalities ?
- simple and quick recipes
- search according to what you have in the fridge
- seasonal products table
- originals recipes
What should we have ?
- shopping list
- menu
- producteurs map
- recipes in video
And, what we won’t have?
- calories focus
- information on our environmental impact
Solution
It’s an application that proposes simple, balanced recipes based on what we have in our fridge, according to the products of the month, without adding too many ingredients.
After that, I created the user flow and the mid-fi wireframes.
And after a usability test on 5 users, we have 3 revealing points to improve :
Screen 1 : the “home” button was in the middle there was confusion because normally it is always on the left side.
Screen 2 : “add to list” button was too small.
Screen 3 : the choice to find products by month was not visual enough.
But all the user flow was well understood.
It’s time to do UI !
We have the moodboard with a colorful color range, balanced between pastel and pop colors.
Ingredients and recipes book pictures and two pictures who remain creative because I drew all the illustrations of the application.
Take a look on the style guide :
And now, I can show you the MVP :
After that, I have done a desirability test and the words that came out were :
- 72% : Healthy
- 56% : Dynamic
- 44% : Happy
which describes well the universe of the application.
I have also done a second round of usability test and we have some interesting quotes like :
“It’s practical and easy to use and not focusing on calories and on this kind of application is really good because it’s not anxiety-inducing! ”, Lucie 25 yo.
What we learn ?
To make people want to eat better it is not necessary to be focus on the calories we consume and the environmental impact of our diet.
Next steps ?
Transfer the MVP to the developers.
Develop the recipes with Chefs.
Thinking about additional functionalities : cooking courses and meet-up about healthy cooking.
Thank you for your reading and please don’t forget to eat five fruits and vegetables per day ! 🥕🥦
