Learn What’s Really in the Food, Then Decide to Buy.

Food Education

fed is a conceptual tool for mobile devices that will scan ingredients on any package. Its purpose: help make quick, confident decisions to purchase based on your personal preferences.

Role: Product Designer

Problem Space

There’s a plethora of diets and nearly impossible to know and understand each one. Why diet in the first place? Why this one over those? There are also other factors that may emphasize or forbid certain foods. There’s a lot to think about an no shortage of questions regarding food choices:

• What will be gained and/or lost in a diet?

• Will nutritional recommendations be met?

• Who are considered to be credible sources of information?

• As a new parent myself, what is best for a child?

Constraints

• Mobile device required

• Data connection required

• Conflicting opinions credible sources

• Unique individual requirements (ranging from allergic to religious beliefs, etc.)

Assumptions

• There’s a need to feel comfortable/confident knowing that the food they offer and consume is sufficient to meet the recommended nutritional requirements.

• A big risk sourcing truly unbiased, reliable information.

• The value offered is knowledge and reassurance about food choices.

Objective

Offer a way to find credible information about food so one feels confident with their purchases. No worrying if the choice is right or wrong. Assure that nutritional requirements will be met. It is not be a dietary plan, but a way to get inspired and create a personal eating lifestyle.

The Process

Search. Re-search. Research.

Establish a strong starting point.
Secondary research gave an idea of what is available:

• What amount and how is the quality of information?

• What are competitor products doing already?

Findings

• Too many sources of information about food and nutrition online; but most say essentially the same things

• Large selection of food and nutrition apps but each had a specific niche (fitness, dietary, children)

Listen to the People

Through interviews, individual opinions were shared about nutrition and diets. Important insight gained regarding shopping habits and factors that can determine food choices.

Requirements of interviewees:

• 25-45 years old

• In a relationship or parents

• Have at least one other person to regularly cook for

Making Sense of it All

Using notes from the interview findings, card sorting gave structure to themes and opportunities. This would allowed me to take the next step and diverge and start exploring ideas for the product.

Key Insight + Findings

People were quite educated and aware of healthy eating. I was surprised to find there is more concern for knowing what is specifically good or bad in food and if it would trigger allergic reactions. Most specific requirements were due to other people they had to feed.

Pivot

A shift away from focusing on nutrition was necessary. People would benefit more from quickly learning if a food item met their personal requirements.

Design for These People

To stay focused and aligned, primary and secondary personas were created. Each being young parents (different size families), different gender and careers, both very busy and needed to feed multiple people.

Task Flow:
Quickly Learn the Quality of Food

Package Scanning

fed’s main purpose is to allow people to scan food packaging to learn about the nutritional values and ingredients. Emphasis on making it a quick purchase decision-making process.

Sketches + Lofi Prototype

Quickly pumping out initial ideas with pen and paper brought my thoughts to reality. Seeing sketches is much more effective than trying to sort ideas in my mind. A lot was inspired by Google Translate’s functionality and ease of use. The greater challenge was deciding what information to display and how. I wanted to explore graphical ways to display information through charts and graphs for noticeability and absorption.

User Testing

One of the most exciting points of a project, where I get to meet people and observe how they interact with my designs. It is essential to obtain honest user feedback when designs work, and arguably more so when they don’t.

For testing, I designated four key tasks and conducted two rounds of user testing. Five different people per round. Success rates improved across the board. Visual structure was well received and comfortably navigated. Information was clearly found and better understood. Not quite perfect but the results gave me confidence to proceed to high fidelity design.

Moodboards + Inspiration

The product had to appeal to all walks of life. I put together a moodboard representing fresh, fun, encouraging, and modern. The UI inspiration board consisted of more specific visuals and functionality.

A simple name to remember and one that describes the app’s purpose. It’s about food and learning about food.

Food. Education. Fed.

The wordmark uses a serif font reminiscent of cook books with a soft, fresh and healthy colour palette.

Hifi Prototype

With the branding styles applied, I wanted to take the concept further by developing additional features that would give a more personalized feel.

Added Features

• Entering name of product

• Save scanned item information

• Establishing personal preferences/criteria

• View/add more people and their preferences

Learnings

During secondary research, the amount of information regarding food and nutrition was daunting. It was a challenge to make sense and keep everything organized. Most rewarding was finding a way to trim all learnings and ideas down to two main aspects (1. personal requirements, and 2. product contents), then developing a fun and intuitive experience that delivers beneficial results.

Ahead for fed

Making it more personable and customizable is always important for the customers; but what can make it a viable business.

Some ideas already in the works are:

• A marketing website

• Tablet version

• Customer can set sensitivity level for a requirement

  • Example - No Trans Fats could be a desire, but not necessarily a must

• Sponsorships from trusted, health and food organizations

  • Products could be featured as alternate options when scan results fail

• Premium paid features

  • Additional charge to add people to your profile