User Study

User: A 25 year old female, who is a a stay at home mother who was once a fitness enthusiast and is now wanting to return to her physically active lifestyle. She is originally from Italy and just moved to the U.S. about eight months ago, so she is getting acclimated to customs. She is multilingual (Italian, English, Spanish) therefore she often browses and visits online sites in either of these languages. Moreover, she currently has apps in her phone that are in Italian and English. The user considers herself competent with technology, but not an expert.

Script: Thank you for being willing to help with this usability study. I will proceed by asking you to complete a few tasks on the Fooducate app using your mobile device. Please walk me through your thoughts out loud while using and making decisions on this app. There is a total of four tasks to complete and it should not take longer than 30 minutes if that. Thanks again for participating with this user study, your feedback and criticism will be taken into high consideration in changes made to the app.

Details of tasks (wording):

1. Set up your Fooducate account.

2. Find a cookie recipe in the app that will take 30 minutes or less to make?

3. Add either your breakfast, lunch, or dinner today, to the food tracker feature of this app?

4. Find an alternative option to a food item that you scan? It can be any food item with a bar-code.

What they did

Task one: User downloaded the app on android phone, then created an account by linking to her gmail. The user mentioned that she really liked this feature as it made it a bit easier and comforting to know it is linked to her gmail account and thus she can get notifications that way.

User did not like that it only had the pounds (lbs) measurement instead of kilos as well. Since the user is European and does not use the same metric system we use here, she was turned off by the fact that she had to google what her weight was in pounds as she only knew it in kilos. She mentioned she wished it had a converter if not several metric systems that the user could choose from. Additionally, she was not a fan that she had to do the same when it came to height measurements because she is not used to using feet/inches. In Italy she uses meters and centimeters, so once again she had to google and convert her height. The user felt this was time consuming and a bit frustrating and took away some time from her moving along with the creation of her profile. She did not find it very accommodating and feels it is only targeting American market.

The user seemed confused by some of the nouns uses to describe genders. When the app asked her to pick her gender it said "gal" or "guy" not being an English native speaker she had never heard this term before being used for female. So once again due to confusion she decided to google this term. She found this specific aspect very frustrating and found the "lingo" used was not very inclusive.

When it came to entering her date of birth (D.O.B) the user did not have any issue as a calendar pops up so that one can enter the day and month they were born in, followed by choosing the year. She found this part to be the easiest of all when inputting her personal information.

The user really appreciated that the app asked the level of active they were in daily life. She really liked that she had answers to choose from such as very active and not active at all. She mentioned this made the plan seem more realistic when it came to her losing and maintaining her weight.

What she particularly loved most of all was the step that asked about the several diet plan variations one can have. Such as keto, gluten free, vegetarian etc. As a mother herself the user thought it was great to see breastfeeding or expectant mother diets were also an option, she said this made her see the app in a new light and in a very inclusive way when it came to diet plans, which she often does not see. Moreover, as someone who has food allergies she follows a gluten free diet, so she was grateful to see this as an option as well.

Task two: The user first clicked on the search icon at the top and typed in "cookie recipe". At first she did not get the results she wanted and was a bit confused cause she was getting cookie options that she could add to the food tracker.

She then clicked on the community feature and clicked on the search icon again and typed in "cookie recipe" and this time she got a set of recipes. The first option did not work as it stated it took over one hour to make and the second option did as it stated the entire recipe took 30 minutes to make. Below is the recipe she found.

Task three: The user clicked on the health tracker feature, followed by clicking on the green plus icon to begin entering her meal. The user chose to enter her breakfast. She had a cup of coffee with 2% milk and some strawberries. Both instances she searched under the search bar and was asked the serving sizes of what she ate. Once she did input this information, she was prompted to hit "ok" or "cancel". Once she hit "ok" a message saying "item added" popped up letting her know it was now in her daily log.

Task four: User clicked on food finder option. A screen that asked to take a picture of bar-code appeared. User then proceeded to scan the container of Pringles (chips) she was eating earlier. The information quickly came up such as the nutrition facts the food grade which was a D+. There was also comments from users that could be viewed under the nutritional facts of this product.

The user then saw at the top there were additional tabs such as "product, explanations, nutrition, alternatives" she then clicked on "alternatives" which gave her a list of foods she could eat instead. It gave her 10 additional food options that had better food grades and were of more nutritious value. She selected the Frito's chips which had a grade of B-.

Once the user completed all four tasks, I mentioned the usability study had concluded and I thanked her for her time.

What was interesting?

• It was interesting the user understood the serving sizes of her breakfast as she had trouble with the weight and height measurements in the beginning. It seems the cooking metric system is the same in most countries with only slight variations.
• By the end of our usability study it seemed the user was a lot more fond or had a more positive perception of the app in comparison to how she felt at the beginning.
• I found the choice of words to determine gender "gal" or "guy" were also strange and not the typical terms that are used which are "female" or "male", I wonder if using these terms made the developers feel it was a bit more inclusive. However, this can be confusing for people unaware or unacknowledged of the terms.
• It was interesting to see that app does not have much nutritional information on store brands or generic brands, it mainly has food items that are major brands.
• Also the formatting of the android phone compared to the iPhone for this app is very different, so it was a bit strange to see.
• Lastly, I found it interesting and a bit disappointing you could not change the language settings on this app, as a matter of fact there were no language settings.

What they didn't do

• The user never selected or visited the diet tips feature.
• In the food scanner option, the user never searched or browed for a food item, even though those were options.
• The user never looked at settings to see if they had any of the languages she speaks or others in general.
• She never explored many of the features besides the ones that were most apparent. She did not explore those such as the mood tracker, water tracker, or community boards.

What was surprising?

• It was surprising that the users mood changed as soon as she got to the food tracking aspect of the usability test. She was at first very frustrated with having to google measurement conversations of what she used in her native country because this app did not have them.
• I also found it surprising that the user mentioned she would invest the in the premium version if her finances allowed because she saw a lot of value in what the app offered.
• A lot of the features I thought would be free were part of the premium package such as being able to plan your meals ahead of time like on a weekly or monthly basis.

Why they did/didn't do things

I think that instinctively when searching for the cookie recipe, she clicked on the search bar icon because that's what most people tend to do when navigating the web, searching for something. However, I do not think it was intuitive for her to search under the community tab for recipes, so that was not her first choice. I also believe she was having a bit of a hard time finding out how much time the cookie recipes took, she finally saw a recipe that was for 30 minutes on her second try.

I thought that at some point during the tasks she would search the settings under her profile for some reference, but she never did.

Relation to Readings

The biggest aspect that stuck out to me and resonated with the readings we have been doing for class is how users prefer convenience and for steps to be as simple as possible. Users do not like apps or websites that require many steps to get to the task or goal they want to accomplish, the more there is, the more frustrating and unappealing it is for the individual. I think this particularly holds true to my user because she was turned off by the apps lack of variation in measurements. She kept sighing and implying how having to web search for conversions or meanings of terms was more time away from the actual app and unnecessarily time consuming. Furthermore, we have read how users appreciate easy app formatting and design and this can hold true to this app is well. There is a lot of information on specific tabs at times, which were overwhelming to the user.

Other readings we have also looked at mention how one should try to make its content as inclusive as possible, which I think the app does a pretty great job in. The user really liked that it took into account nursing mothers or those with food allergies.

Redesign Speculations

• Change terms "gal" and "guy" when creating an account.
• Add more metric systems not just the ones used in the U.S. as perhaps some users may be not used to them.
• Add more languages that the app can be accessed and used in.
• Addition of other goals besides losing weight, such as maintaining weight or building muscle. The user had mentioned that she would of liked to have seen other goal options when first creating her account.
• Addition of nutrition information and food grading of more generic food brands and not just the well known brands. (ex. Target- Market Pantry, Walmart- Great Value, Costco- Kirkland, Walgreens- Nice).