Solo Project - Academic Brief
Nurture
Nurture was a academic project to conceptualize how a design solution may improve a real and current problem in the world through human-centered design.
Nurture’s goal was to conceptualize how AI Camera Scanning can be used in a nutrition app to help university students understand their food better to make better food/nutrition choices.
Project Details
Problem Statement
“Students may not have the nutrition or food literacy to make healthy food choices when shopping groceries or eating out, consequently impacting their health and daily performance.”
Duration
8 Weeks
My Role
Prototyping
UI/ UX Designer
Team Members
Jason Lin
Before I came up with Nurture, during the brief I knew I wanted to create something that was fitness or nutrition focus for this human-centered design brief. As during this time I was into fitness, and as a result, started using nutrition apps to track my food intake.
And this behavior was the reason why I wanted to make Nurture. When I first decided to use nutrition tracking apps I was simply hitting my nutrition and calorie number goals. I didn’t know why other than that protein was for muscle growth, carbs for energy and fat should be avoided, yet there was a number goal for fat too. And with the numerous amount of macro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals, it felt overwhelming for me.
For the target audience of Nurture, I decided to pick Students. I thought students would be the ideal target as most of us have recently become independent, but also have a lot of responsibilities that require the best version of ourselves.
And without healthy nutrition habits, students may find themselves unable to perform as well as they want.
Research
With Nurture taking the direction of a nutrition app, doing research around existing competitors was key to ensure Nurture could fill in the gaps the competitors had. It also helped to understand the user flow of a nutrition app.
The insights I found were that these commonly used competitor apps were number focused. It was encouraging users to reach number goals first and track their nutrition intake, rather than learn about nutrition. This lead Nurture to eventually become a nutrition app that is word-focused rather than number-focused.
Other forms of research consisted of secondary research of nutrition and health related issues and topics within New Zealand. But also one-to-one interviews with university students to understand their perspective, behaviors and values around food and nutrition.
Secondary Research
New Zealand is off course in nutrition consumption
Global Nutrition Report
New Zealand ranked third in obesity among OECD (38) Countries.
Ministry of Health New Zealand
There is a overwhelming presence of unhealthy foods in New Zealand’s Supermarkets
Food Environment Aotearoa
Student Interview Insights
Students wanted a visual experience to learn about nutrition.
Convenience plays a major factor in students meal choices
Macro and Micro nutrients knowledge is limited among students.
After students realized the benefits of nutrition, they valued the benefits of improved daily performance and health.
Student’s health goals and nutritional literacy/knowledge affects what areas of the nutrition label they look at
The Nurture App
With the research and interviews done, Nurture offered students a quick and convenient way to learn about what they’re eating, but also build better nutrition habits.
It starts off at the home screen, which offers a glance into your current daily intake and any food insights you may have.
At the bottom is where you will be tracking your food through the big green plus.
As you click the big green plus, you are able to take a quick photo of the meal infront of you for the app to give you a quick summary of its nutrition contents and its effect on you.
In the summary screen, we can see the nutrition content of the food itself, but also a AI insight about the food to help you understand what you’re eating, and what effects it can have on your body.
And at the end of the day, Nurture generates a daily report based on your food intake for that day. It provides information and advice to help you build better nutrition habits.
Behind the Scenes
To ensure Nurture had a convenient user flow that works with the AI food scanning function, I took inspiration from my case studies of competitor nutrition apps. This was done by using their app myself, and finding out what I liked, and taking notes on what I could improve on while personally navigating through them.
Through sketches and lo-fi prototyping, I found a flow that I thought would work for Nurture.
Outcome
With the creation of Nurture, I hope eating healthy food and building better nutrition habits becomes easier and convenient for students. With students facing all sort of constraints, from budget to time, I hope this app helps alleviates the issues that may get in the way of healthy eating.
And as a personal reflection, It was a fun project to create a competing app against well established apps that offer a similar purpose. It pushes you to find out what these apps are lacking, and what is new or available to take advantage of. In this case, it was how using AI might work in a nutrition app to fill a gap within the current nutrition app market.
