Reflection

Overall, this design process taught us how every single decision and step taken had to have the user in mind. If there was no reason behind a design or thought process, it was not worth having in the project. It is crazy to me that each and every single thing that we've done this entire quarter has all gone towards designing this one app. I learned how to create user flow diagrams, how to conduct user interviews, how to conduct user testing, how to prototype, and how to support all of my design decisions. These are all things that I did not know went into design at all until I took this class. Whenever I used to design things, I would just think of a problem and immediately jump to a solution. This design process has taught me that I need to think of the users before putting any thought into the actual solution.

Throughout the design of this project, one thing that our team struggled with was determining what the scope of our project should be. We always wanted to add more and more features, but we didn't really stop to think why we were adding those features and how realistic it was to put all of those features into one product. This was something that we struggled with throughout the whole quarter. Every now and then, we would realize that one of our features was not the most relevant to our solution, and we would have to make the decision to remove it.

Since I am so used to just jumping to a solution, I think what surprised me and fundamentally changed our design was our feedback from the two participant interviews, which reshaped how we thought about the product. The interviews made it clear that students don’t really plan and just react more. Participant 1 talked about estimating calories and protein on the fly, then making up shortfalls with a shake later in the day. Participant 2 had a rigid daily routine driven by money and time, not by nutrition goals. Neither was looking for a plan. They wanted help in the moment on their terms. Participant 1's "if it's tedious, I won't use it" became our filter for every decision. The hardest part was trying to make new features that didn’t already exist. Instead, we found inspiration from various other apps and added in features from multiple apps that we liked, putting them into one. This provided a new experience for users without having to come up with entirely new ways to do things. This whole process showed me that when things aren’t designed with the users in mind, it becomes very apparent when it comes time for the user to test it out.

If we had more time, we'd design the edge cases (failed scans, missed days, empty results), run a second round of testing with more diverse participants, build the AI meal suggestion screen we haven't gotten to yet, and ideally run a short live pilot with a real back end connected to one university's dining data. Creating a higher fidelity prototype and asking for user feedback in that iteration would have also been very informative for our end product. Long-term, Smarter Bites could integrate with campus dining services, partner with wellness centers and dietitians, use location information to provide better recommendations, and deepen its understanding of each student over time. Integrating deeply into the user's life allows it to provide the best possible recommendations. Due to time, we also never made it to implementing a messaging or friends system. The idea behind this was that with a community, it would be easier to stay consistent and want to use our app. With more time, we would add this system and test it out with the users.