Erik Zimmerman
MacroMunch
is a calorie and macronutrient tracking app that helps people lose weight through proper nutrition. Designed for those just beginning their healthier lifestyle, weight loss has never been more simple.
PROJECT
MacroMunch Mobile Application and Responsive Site
ROLE
User Experience and Interface Designer
TIMELINE
November 2022 - February 2023
The Problem
Obesity is a major health concern in the United States, as it affects a large percentage of the population and increases the risk of various serious health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in three adults in the United States are classified as obese.
While there are many potential factors that can contribute to obesity, including genetics, lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise play a significant role. However, for many individuals struggling with obesity, permanent weight loss can seem unachievable due to a variety of challenges such as a lack of time to exercise, or the difficulty of adhering to a diet.
The Solution
Promote proper nutrition with mindful eating habits as an effective way to lose weight. Provide healthy and delicious recipes along with easy-to-use tracking mechanisms to reach a target weight by maintaining a caloric deficit.
Key Challenges
01
Inform
Effectively advise users on nutrition and how a caloric deficit works.
02
Results
Lack of measurable progress towards a weight goal will decrease retention rate.
03
Ease-of-Use
Minimize the effort required to accurately track caloric consumption.
04
Balance
Combine a healthy recipe finder with calorie and macro tracker.
The User
A round of interviews was conducted in order to begin defining the early direction of the app.
What does "eating healthy" mean to you?
A primary target user began to emerge: overweight adults that want to lose their excess pounds by eating healthier, but know little about nutrition. Looking through the lens of this target user would prove invaluable when making difficult design decisions.
PRIMARY
Name: Dominic Reyes
Age: 43
Occupation: Cybersecurity
Dom used to practice healthy eating habits throughout his young adult life. But, ever since becoming a dad and taking on more responsibility at work, his health has taken a backseat. At a recent physical, his doctor recommended he lower his BMI by losing at least 30 pounds. Dom wants to adhere to this advice so he can be secure in his health as he raises his child.
SECONDARY
Name: Elizabeth Godfrey
Age: 39
Occupation: Marketing
Elizabeth has been divorced for over a year and wants to start dating again. The problem is she is insecure in her body due to the way it looks in the mirror. She also has a vacation planned to Key West in a few months with a group of friends and wants to feel good about herself when wearing less clothes.
Competitive Analysis
I noticed a divide between calorie-tracking apps and recipe apps. Calorie-tracking apps lack healthy recipe ideas for the user to implement into their diet while recipe apps lack focus on nutrition and health.
The opportunity was to merge calorie tracking with healthy recipes. MacroMunch was born.
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MYFITNESSPAL
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WHISK
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MYPLATE
Information Architecture
Constructing the user flow helped organize and connect my ideas for features within the app. This high-level view shed light on how my primary user, Dom, would interact with the product.
The pantry feature was eventually removed in favor of a more focused user flow.
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Wireframes
The direction the app headed in was a healthy recipe finder and food tracker. As I explored various ideas that supported these two processes, I had to remember I was designing a tool to enable Dom to reach his goal of losing weight by eating healthier.
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CHALLENGE 1
Onboard and Inform
Gently guide Dom through onboarding, acquiring the necessary data points to calculate his daily nutrient intake while explaining how his information is being used.
Calories Out - Calories In = Net Calorie Gain / Loss
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CHALLENGE 2
A Lifestyle, not a Diet
How might I encourage Dom to stick with it? Lacking quick progress while sustaining a caloric deficit can be frustrating and cause him to give up.
Research indicated that a lack of healthy and delicious recipes is a big factor when failing to adhere to a meal plan. Multiple rounds of testing and iterating on the homepage aimed to optimize the process of discovering new recipes.
CHALLENGE 3
So Many Ways to Track
Anyone that has counted their calories will tell you how much of a chore it is. Minimizing the effort required to accurately track calories would delight Dom whose primary goal is to lose weight.
The solution was to build context-based mechanisms for adding to the tracker. Add by search or from the recipe page, scan a barcode, enter custom amounts, or create a recipe.
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Create a Recipe / Manual Entry
CHALLENGE 4
The Recipe Page
This was a difficult page to design as it walked the line between being informative and easy to scan. Recipe pages can quickly become oversaturated and lack focus.
I had to let the context - a healthy recipe in a calorie-tracking app - drive the design. Several combinations of ideas went through rounds of testing, being refined to meet the needs of Dom.
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Recipe Page Interactions
Responsive Site
The MacroMunch website is designed to promote the mobile app. Anyone can access the recipe and blog pages, driving traffic to the website. The home and tracker pages encourage the user to download the app by providing insight into how it works and testimonials.
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Takeaways
MacroMunch is designed to make losing weight less difficult. As obesity rates continue to rise, the tools to fight back need to improve. Strict diets and hours of exercise don't work for most people. Conscious consumption is all that is needed and this app enables the user to do just that.
What I Learned
Creating this app once again showed me the importance of viewing through the lens of a target user and using that to guide and filter down the various directions the designs can head in.
Through this project, I gained substantial knowledge on Interaction Design. My objective was to infuse the app with an energetic feeling, achieved by incorporating page transitions and smart animations for menus and interactive components.