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Heuristic analyze
Heuristic analyze
Visibility of system status: The menu bar that located at the bottom has all main sections of the Fooducate app. Once the user select a certain section, the according button on the menu bar will become colored. This reminds users which section they are looking at. Also, on home pages of different section, there is always a title on top to ensure the visibility of system status. A problem is that for the “save as meal” function, when a meal has been saved successfully, there is no notification to acknowledge users.
Match between system and the real world: The app uses measurement that serves Americans the best(ft, lbs, oz, etc.). Using the same measurement with foods/drinks sold in the actual market helps users to record their diet without doing conversion by themselves. But when entering personal information(weight and height) and recording food amount, only accepting such measurement(ft, lbs, oz) makes the app hard to use for foreigners who are used to other measurement(cm, kg, ml).
User control and freedom: The frozen menu bar allows users to go to the section they want regardless of where they are currently in. Also, when users entered a specific post or food detail, there is a back arrow which will lead users to the previous page. When add a new food for daily intake, there is a cancel options which allows users to quit the ‘add food’ function whenever they want.
Consistency and standards: The overall color scheme and interface of the app is highly consistent. But in the food nutritious fact database, the measurements used for different food are different. For example, there are different kinds of rice data in the app, some are recorded in cup and others are in fl oz. The app does not support conversion between measurements and has no standardized definition of ‘a cup’. This might create confusion for users who are not familiar with cup measurement or users who want to compare these two data.
Error prevention: For action which has relatively higher risk, logging out for example, the app will pop up a confirmation notice which prevents possible error.
Recognition rather than recall: When adding foods, there are labels like “Recent”, “My Food”, “My Recipe” which are more customized and users do have to repeatedly search from the entire food database. The search function accepts keywords and will list out all data that are related to that keyword which also facilitate recognition rather than recall.
Flexibility and efficiently of use: The food labels shortcut mentioned in the previous section satisfies this rule. Also, users can save a recorded combination of food as a “meal” and directly add the entire meal to their daily intake. This can become a easy shortcut for users who have a “stable” daily food combination.
Aesthetic and minimalist design: All functions in the diet tracking sections are displayed by “icon + keyword” format which makes the functions more understandable. The entire application adopts a black & white color scheme which is clear and clean. A simple graph is presented on the homepage of diet summary which is easier to read. Users can have an understanding of their current calories quickly. Also, other data including weight change and dimension change are also available in the graph form.
Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Since the app is mainly for diet tracking, there is not much “error” actions. The only thing I noticed is that under the community section, when the user has no personal post, the “MY” tab will be entirely blank, without a prompt informing users that they do not have post yet. Users might misunderstand that the page is blank due to internet failure and content could not be loaded.
Help and documentation: Since all functions are clear and easy to use, I personally believe the need for documentation is limited. After playing around with the app for some time, users should have no difficulty using all functions. But as mentioned in the consistency section, there should be information about how measurement like “cup” is defined. Also, there is no “Help” section to assist users just in case they could not figure out how to use the app.
Supplemental method
Supplemental method
To further explore the app, I went through a cognitive walkthrough
Task: record my lunch intake for 01/11/2019 (broccoli, shrimp, rice, and milk tea)
Steps: 1. click the + button under tracker
2. select “Food”
3. search for broccoli
4. choose the data that matches my intake the best and edit amount
5. click “Add”
6. repeat 3-5 for other foods
Findings:
- The “quick” function under tracker can be confusing for first time user. It is designed to record “quick calories” but simply using the word “quick” can make people think about something like “quick add from recent food”.
- Search results have to be displayed by categories (grocery, fast food, user added, and recipes). There is no way to display all results on one page and compare them.
- When selecting the amount of food, the unit is fixed(mentioned in Heuristic analyze)
- All food records are grouped by time. I entered broccoli at 11:45 and entered chicken later the day, if I want them to be in the same group, I have to go back and check the time I entered for broccoli. Then put 11:45 for chicken also. Personally I feel like grouping food by time is too detailed. Also, in the daily summary view, the edit function only allows me to delete multiple records but not to move records to another group.
- In the daily summary view, if I click on one record, it leads me to the nutritious information of that specific kind of food, instead of my personal intake record. To edit my intake record, I have to left slide that record and then edit/delete.
Competitive analyze 1: Mint
Competitive analyze 1: Mint
Introduction: Mint is a food tracking app which mainly serves Chinese users. Although it uses a different language, the main functions on Mint is highly similar to Fooducate so I chose it as one competitor of Fooducate. Personally as a Mint user, I noticed some features that Mint did better than Fooducate.
Comparison:
- On the Mint homepage, there is a graph of weight losing procedure, showing how many pounds you lost and how far away you are from your goal. This can serve as a good motivation for users that are working hard to lose weight. Although in US users might care more about other data like body fat percentage (BFP), having a goal tracker on the home page can still be a good idea. It doesn’t have to be weight, both BFP and BMI can be good options.
- Mint has a page which tells you how to estimate the weight of different kinds of food. For example, a small plate of veggie is roughly 150g and a slice of toast is roughly 50g. The size of containers is shown by comparing it with a credit card. This function can really help novice who do not know how to estimate food weight.
- Mint has its own standard to evaluate how healthy an item is. For user added items, Mint will automatically calculate if the food is “red light”, “yellow light”, or “green light”. But Fooducate required users to grade each item by themselves using a slide bar. I prefer the design of Mint since it will help users who do not know much about nutrition. Also the slide bar (quantitative measure) on Fooducate can be overly detailed compared with the light classification (qualitative measure) on Mint.
- When recording daily diet, foods are grouped by meal in Mint. Users can choose from “breakfast”, “morning snack”, “lunch”, “afternoon snack”, “dinner”, and “night snack”. It won’t record the actual time. This classification is convenient for people who have a “stable” diet pattern. But the time classification used by Fooducate can be helpful for those who have a “messy” diet pattern. Fooducate can definitely offer more detailed information about time so it is hard to say which app did a better job. My personal advice would be recording actual time and grouping by meals.
- Mint only allows measurement in g for food and ml for beverage when creating a new item. Although this design increases the consistency of food dataset, but it can be unfriendly for people using other measurement. Both application failed to provide conversion between units but in Fooducate, users can at least create new item using the unit they are comfortable with.
- Fooducate has a better interface when editing the amount of food. On Mint, the amount of food is adjusted using a ruler bar. The default value is around 200g to make sure users don’t have to slide a lot. But this ruler can become hard to use for larger amount of food. Also the slide bar can be hard to control if users want to enter a precise value. On Fooducate, users can either choose from different serving buttons (1 serving, 1.5 servings…) or manually enter a number if they want precise value.
- Fooducate has a quick calories function which Mint doesn’t have. The quick calories function can be really helpful when users do not know very much about an item and only want to keep a vague record.
Competitive analyze 2: MyPlate Calorie Counter
Competitive analyze 2: MyPlate Calorie Counter
Introduction: MyPlate is a calorie tracker which uses the world’s largest food database and provide you with calorie count, nutritional information and serving sizes for millions of foods. It records daily calorie intake, including water, food and exercise. Similar to Fooducate and Mint, MyPlate also has an online community for users to interact.
Comparison:
- Similar to Mint, MyPlate also classifies foods by meal and will not record the exact time of intakes. MyPlate differs from Mint since MyPlate only have one snack category and Mint differentiates snack by morning, afternoon and night.
- Unlike previous tracker, daily calorie intake is represented using a colored horizontal bar. Personally I think this is a better design since it takes less space. MyPlate uses a round graph to show the distribution of nutritious intake.
- When searching for an item, MyPlate will give search suggestions which is not available for Fooducate and Mint. The search suggestion makes the interface more ‘friendly’ by fulfilling the recognition rather than recall rule in heuristic analyze.
- To edit the amount of food intake, Myplate uses a roller control which is similar to how we set alarm on iPhone(the smallest unit is 1/4). The unit used is serving/cup/tsp which is not as precise as g or ml. For users who are more familiar with g or ml, they have to do the conversion themselves and select the option that is closest to their actual intake. It might be impossible to record their actual intake since the smallest fraction in the roller control is 1/4.
- The “Add” function in Myplate is located at the top right corner of the screen. For a food tracking app, the Add function is a frequent used function and should be as obvious as possible. But compared with Fooducate and Mint which use a large button on the bottom, the button on MyPlate is less obvious.
- Similar to Fooducate, most items in the dataset are measured in cup and there is no explanation on how big a cup is.
- MyPlate is the only app among the three apps being analyzed that has a unit of measurement control. Users can set their preferred unit in personal setting. But this function only applies to weight(lb vs. kg), height(ft vs. m) and water intake(oz vs. ml).
- The items in MyPlate database do not have pictures. This makes the app less visually attractive and harder to use for people with limited language ability.
Trade-off of designs
Trade-off of designs
- Switching from time classification to meal classification gave up accuracy and increased similarity.
- Switching from self-graded custom food to automatic-graded custom food gave up user freedom and makes the app more professional.
- Keeping measurement unit consistent (cup) increased consistency but gave up flexibility.
- Using horizontal bar instead of circular bar for calorie summary increased simplicity but decreased aesthetic attraction
- Adding pictures to food database gave up simplicity but makes information easier to understand.
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