Noorish: Promoting Healthy Nutrition

How might we give users a clearer understanding of their diet habits to encourage healthier eating through simple and attainable goals?

User Experience Design

User Research

User Interface Design

SCOPE
Nine-day design sprint in a group of 3, as part of a UX UI design certification program.

MY ROLE

I was responsible for contributing to the overall project which spanned from conducting primary and secondary research to identify opportunities, to concept ideation, design and prototyping and, finally, usability and desirability testing. I leveraged my previous experience working in industrial product design teams to lead the group through the design process and manage our timeline.

TOOLS

Figma, Figjam, Trello, Canva, Discord, Zoom

PROJECT CONTEXT

To kick off this project around health and wellness, we were given the very board brief of "How can technology be used to help people live healthier lives?" and were prompted to develop an MVP around this topic. Given the freedom to explore the many subtopics (exercise, sleep quality, mental health, etc) in this booming space we chose to focus on diet and nutrition.

Introducing Noorish

A gamified way to track simple nutrition goals that does away with calorie counting.

SET SIMPLE GOALS IN A FEW CLICKS

Noorish encourages you to set goals that increase your healthy-food intake, as well as reduce foods that are better enjoyed in moderation (ie, you should eat less of them!)

Through an onboarding process, you are asked a set of questions guiding you to goals best suited to your diet and motivations. You can later adjust these at any time in just a few clicks.

All goals are accompanied by additional information to help you understand it better (ex: what types of food will increase my fiber intake and what counts as 'one portion'?) and why it is good to eat more or less of it.

DAILY MOTIVATION THROUGH GAMIFIED VISUALISATIONS

On a minimal home dashboard, you can quickly and easily see all the goals you've set for yourself.

To encourage interaction and keep you going, a fun visualisation at the top of the page shows you a summary of your day so far: as your plates fill up with the foods you want to eat more/less of, the plates will turn darker in shade, indicating you are reaching your intake goals and limits.

TRACK YOUR PROGRESS TO FORM LASTING HABITS

Your progress is logged and visualised in simple graphs so you can see how you are progressing with your goals over time.

See a total overview of your 'Eat More' and 'Eat Less' goals, or dive deeper and inspect individual goals to see your intake average against your goal. Noorish will always keep you motivated and encouraged with fun facts about your nutrition, tips to help you reach your goals, and additional resources like recipes to inspire your next meal.

The calendar view is a quick way to visualise whether you've been hitting your goals, while the 'Streak' feature keeps you motivated to keep going!

Designing Noorish, the process at a glance...

A QUICK SURVEY TO GATHER INITIAL INSIGHTS

As the topic of diet and nutrition is so broad, we started out by trying to get a better understanding of what was most important to people in their daily lives, what motivated them, and what existing tools they already used to help them maintain (or improve) their healthy lifestyle.

We managed to reach 75 survey participants to gather some valuable input. Some quick figures:

10 INTERVIEWS TO DIG DEEPER

Armed with a good base of initial insights, we took to interviewing 10 people who we identified as 'mildly health-conscious' (they are conscious of their diet's health impacts but aren't actively working to change their habits).

This was our opportunity to validate our assumptions around behaviours and motivations, as well as uncover pain points which could lead to design opportunities.

CATEGORISING COMMON THEMES

We collected all the insights and built an affinity diagram to help identify the patterns that emerged.

The biggest themes that came through from our interviewees were an uncertainty of just how healthy their diets were (but a lack of interest to actually dig deeper to find out), a desire to make small improvements that could eventually become normalised as habit, and the importance of their social life and how it affects their diet (friends were more often seen as having a negative impact on diet, while a partner was seen as the opposite).

EMPATHISING WITH THE USER

By combining the most common traits and findings from both the survey and interviews, we created a user persona and mapped out a day in their life in terms of what their diet looked like, how they made their decisions on what to eat and how that made them feel. This helped us to identify the main pain point: the fact that they are uncertain how healthy their diet really is, despite making efforts to keep it balanced.

ANALYSING THE COMPETITOR LANDSCAPE

With a good understanding of what we were trying to solve, we had a look at what apps were out there, where we could position ourselves against them and whether there was an opportune gap we could capitalise on.

We quickly discovered that there indeed was a gap missing in terms of resolving our persona's problem. Most apps focusing on diet and nutrition involved more complex monitoring than our persona was willing to invest in (calorie counting, logging individual ingredients, weighing and calculating, etc). These apps got even more complex when they broadened and incorporated other aspects of health and wellness (like fitness, mood or sleep tracking).

UNCOVERING THE SOLUTION

We dove into ideating around the question:

How might we give users a clearer understanding of their diet habits to encourage healthier eating through simple and attainable goals?

And what kept cropping up were the ideas of gamifying the solution to keep our persona motivated and the idea of ultra-simple tracking that involved just the tap of a button because our persona is busy and only wants to commit quick interactions.

BRINGING THE SOLUTION TO LIFE

Through an iterative process, starting with sketched lo-fi wireframes to perform concept testing and moving into mid-fi wireframes to undergo usability testing, we ironed out potential areas that could cause confusion to the user.

When it was time to bring colour, typography and styling to the design, we turned to the mood board which communicated the motivational, minimal, fun and fresh essence we wanted our solution to convey. This helped us to put together a style tile that was used to construct the final hi-fi prototype.

Input Daily Activity

Set Goals

Track Progress

BEYOND THE MVP

In keeping with our aim of tying this goal-tracker seamlessly and simply into the user's lifestyle, we considered the integration of a smart watch application where functionality is kept to a minimum.

The user simply scrolls through their goals and taps to quickly add the foods they are tracking, and are rewarded with the same visualisation that appears in the mobile app.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR NOORISH?

During both the mid-fi usability testing and continued testing of the hi-fi prototype, we understood that there was a need to develop more than just daily goals - some goals are more appropriately tracked across a week or a month (for example, if someone wanted to reduce their meat intake, they may create goals over a longer period). For our MVP, we focused on daily goals, but that would be our first next-step to tackle.

Additionally, what we had discovered both through our interviews, surveys, and further discussions with users during testing, was that the social aspect around diet is a huge influential factor. Given more time and scope, we would have worked in the social network aspect of Noorish - whether that was following friends in order to keep each other supported, or to gamify the goals further by creating challenge between community members.

FINAL PROJECT TAKE AWAYS

My most significant takeaway from this project is twofold: I realized the inherent inclination to frame things based on my own assumptions, as well as the tendency to rush into offering solutions or drawing conclusions. As a UX designer, it is essential to continuously combat these tendencies. Throughout this project, I practiced the underrated skill of challenging assumptions and restraining solution-driven thinking until the appropriate moment. By practicing this discipline, I learned the importance of patience and strategic timing in the design process, allowing for a more thoughtful and effective approach to problem-solving.