FulFill
Mobile App

Picture of home page of FulFill mobile app

Click the image to view
high fidelity prototype.

Read further for case study.

Instead of another macro counting app, FulFIll allows users to connect their eating habits to their emotions.

Roles & Responsibilities

UX Research
UX Design
User Testing
Branding
UI Design

Audience

FulFill is for anyone of various ages or genders, who is ready to look into the patterns behind their eating habits. It's an inclusive space, created to empower users to speak to themselves in their own voice.

Problem

Today's marketplace is filled with food journal apps with macro counters embedded. people start strong but often fail because they're not built to constantly analyse charts & graphs.

Solution

FulFill is a mobile app that allows users to not only log what they eat in a casual manner, but how they feel before & after they eat. Over time the user gets to see any emotional patterns that may be unhealthy, and now has the tools to stop themselves from repeating those patterns.

Deliverables

Google Survey
Competitive Analysis
Personas
User Stories
Task Flows
Wireframes
Mockups

Tools

Google Forms
Figma
maze.com
Zoom video

Process

Discovery & Research

Competitive Analysis

I used 4 apps with the highest download numbers. The following is a breakdown of screenshots from FatSecret, Food Diary, Loose It!, and iEatBetter.

Things to avoid: mobile screen with bar graphs & macro counters.Things to improve: mobile screens with colorful interfacesThings to include: mobile screens with simple text input.

Google Survey

This survey was posted in a Facebook group dedicated to healthy living. While not completely definitive, the results were a good basis to continue.

76.9% of people will discuss emotional issues while anonymous56.4% of people didn't have a healthy relationship with food modeled as children.51.3% of people have never owned a food tracking app.

Personas

Meet Corina

Picture of female working in lad.

Corina is the lead lab tech at a research hospital vying for a new funding grant. She spends long hours in the lab, which takes away from her daily life with her partner. She eats whatever's at the lab, whether it's healthy or not.

Demo

Age: 36      Female       Lab Tech

User Story

"As someone who deals with standards & procedures all day, sometimes i need to escape numbers so that I can understand context."

Pain Points

  • Feels obligated to eat with partner after work, despite not truly being hungry
  • Feels burnt out from dealing with charts & graphs all day
  • Constantly  in fear of the department not getting the grant due to her poor performance

Goals

  • Wants to be able to be emotionally present once she's done with work
  • Wants to monitor her food choices in a casual way
  • Wants to be a healthy & stalwart department head

Meet Curtis

Picture of male soldier saluting

Curtis is a retired Captain in the U.S. Army working as a V.A. Advocate. He often travels for meetings without scheduling time to eat.  He usually only eats when there's nothing left to do & self reflection isn't a high priority.

Demo

Age: 42    Male    Veteran Advocate

User Story

"As someone used to handling situations analytically, I need prompting to deal with emotions in order for me to change old habits."

Pain Points

  • Often finds himself with very few healthy options while traveling
  • Can't acknowledge his unhealthy eating patterns
  • Can't let go of his career long stoicism

Goals

  • Wants to maintain his Active Duty physique
  • Wants to be around as long as possible to help fellow Veterans adjust to civilian life
  • Feels as a leader, he must learn how to efficiently deal with emotions & stress

Meet Connor

Picture of young male teacher.

Connor is a high school teacher who left his small town in Texas to teach in Houston. His larger class sizes create extra work. Between the heavier course load & him not yet quite fitting in, he's often bored & isolated.

Demo

Age: 29       Male      High School Teacher

User Story

"As someone who constantly has kids looking to me for answers, I need to be able to not be the authority so I can grow in other areas."

Pain Points

  • Wants to be active, but doesn't have time with bigger class & new workload
  • Has noticed that he is snacking considerably more while grading work
  • Feels like the "small town guy" no one on the staff wants to associate with

Goals

  • Wants to keep wearing his current wardrobe to class without major changes
  • Wants to be respected; both by his students, as well as the other faculty members
  • Wants to avoid falling into patterns he's seen displayed by older teachers

Information Architecture

User Tasks

After constructing the 3 personas, I walked through 3 user tasks that illustrate how the app would help each persona satisfy their unique user story.

Corina Adds Entry

After a deeply analytical day, this task flow satisfies her story by allowing her to input a meal with a casual amount (e.g. a plate full, 1/3 of a bag), and urging her to explore her emotions.

User task flow displays Corina logging a meal.

Curtis Finds Patterns

Curtis needs to process emotions in a way that makes sense to him. This task flow uses an analytical approach that's familiar to Curtis in order to show him patterns of emotions & unhealthy eating habits.

User task flow displays Curtis finding a pattern.

Connor Sets Pep Talk

Despite his loneliness, Connor needs some outside help to change his new habits. This task flow allows Connor to utilize his own authority to tell himself how to make a healthy food choice.

User task flow displays Connor creating a Pep Talk.

Sketch To Digital

From these basic sketches I was able to theorize basic concepts of Iconography, Hierarchy, & proximity.

Picture of early wireframe sketchesPicture of basic digital wireframes.

My main concerns were two fold. Was I cramming too much on a page, and how close was I with the icon selection. After feedback from fellow designers I created the wireframes for each user flow. Afterwards, I began the color application & visual design.

Visual Design

After browsing Dribble & Pinterest two mood boards came to fruition. The first is based on emotions, while the second is based on words. They both influence the color palette used for the app.

Picture of mood board consisting of emojis & multi colored renditions of humans.Picture of mood board consisting of emotional words.

We've all seen the most prominent logos in the marketspace. I decided to keep the current model of one letter in a branded color scheme.

Picture of 3 different capital F's in logo treatment.

The main questions here were: what icon to pair the letter with? And what shape should the outline be?

I sent these option pages out to other designers via Slack & LinkedIn. The response was overwhelming: #11 is the best received!

Picture of 11 different logos Featuring letter F in different color schemes.

User Testing

First Iteration

Once the over-all visual & color themes were set, it was time to apply them to the first iteration. This is the round when the first unmonitored user testing via maze.com happened.
The testing consisted of 3 tasks based on these user tasks:

  1. Record your current meal & how you feel about it.

    "Sign in & record what you're eating, as well as how you feel. The info will be filled in for you."
  2. See how often potato chips don't satisfy you.

    "Use the app to see how many times you've eaten chips then been dissatisfied & keep the results. The info will be filled in for you."
  3. Set up a positive reminder for later.

    "Use the app to encourage yourself to make a smart food choice. The info will be filled in for you."

Even though many testers liked the initial layout overall, some didn't & let me know there was room for improvement. Having a forum for direct feedback was critical to the direction of the next iteration.

One issue I didn't foresee was the desire for testers to simply click throughout the app without staying on task. This tended to skew the success rate noticeably.

Tester quote about not focusing on given tasks.

Although the success rates were decent on the tasks of Add Entry & Find Pattern, they were well below acceptable for the main task of Create Pep Talk. Even accounting for mavericks, there was no way to ignore the need to improve user experience.

Pictograph; 14.3% direct success, 28.6% indirect success, 57%.1 failure

Yeah. That's bad.

Reiteration

Screenshot of app home page, 1st iteration.

1st Round of
User Testing

Screenshot of app home page, 2nd iteration.

2nd Round of
User Testing

  • Prioritized "Pep Talks"
  • Changed trim & text color from green to purple
  • Switched to quadrant style
  • Added descriptive text to bottom navigation icons
Screenshot of app home page, 3rd iteration.

3rd Round of
User Testing

  • Elevated "Profile" icon
  • Elevated "Add Meal" icon
  • Changed "Add Entry" to "Edit Meal" in bottom navigation
  • Lessened use of drop shadow
Screenshots showing definition pages for "Pep Talk" & "Anchor".

2nd round of user testing

Screenshots showing definition pages for "Pep Talk" & "Anchor", 2nd iteration.

3rd round of user testing

The last numbers from unmonitored testing aren't perfect, but they do show great growth. There's still some hiccup in the Pep Talk task, but its combined success rate is encouraging as a MVP.

Pictograph; 63.2% direct success, 21.1% indirect success, 15.8% failure.Pictograph; 62.5% direct success, 18.8% indirect success, 18.8% failure.Pictograph; 47.1% direct success, 35.3% indirect success, 17.6% failure.

Zoom Testing

After wrapping up the unmonitored maze.com testing, it was time to see how users reacted to the app live.

Screenshot of definition screen for "Patterns".Screenshots of "Pattern" feature, before & after.

Pep Talk Alert

After several rounds of user testing I focused on the end result of the app, the Pep Talk Alert. These were the 3 options created.

3 options of alert appearance; Letter-based logo, brain with knife & fork logo, or user picture.

After presenting the options at the end of live interviews, as well as to fellow designers via Slack, the favorite emerged. Overwhelmingly, people felt the option that included the user's picture carried far more weight than the options with a logo.

Screenshot of "Pep Talk" feature giving an alert.

Having the user's profile pic would enable the user to hear the Pep Talk alert in their own voice, as opposed to feeling like someone else is telling them what to do. This leaves them feeling empowered to enact change instead of blindly following anonymous orders.

Conclusion

Final Flow

This is the final user flow of the Pep Talk Feature in high fidelity screens.

Collection of screen shots showcasing latest task flow for "Pep Talk" feature.

Accessability

Image showing color palette approval from color.adobe.com

Efforts Taken:

Final Thoughts

Although I thought I was fairly close with the 1st iteration, the internet is undefeated. I learned quickly that the green trim was too much for many users to digest visually. I also was made aware of how my icon alignment simply didn't work in a practical manner for left handed people.

Creating the MVP for this app was an experience in patience & detachment. I had to come to grips with people not caring about how they complete a task during testing, or even if they completed the task at all. Users gave up, and didn't understand directions & phrasing I personally thought were plain. This truly taught me to understand that perspectives, experiences, and even vocabularies are wildly different.

Going forward, I know that unmonitored testing is great for bulk results and pointing out glaring systemic issues. However, quantitative data proved to spark some of the most important changes from iteration to iteration. It is this balance that has lead to the creation of the FulFill mobile app.

Thank You.