FoodBaby: Stress-Free Pregnancy
Spend less time worrying about food and more time getting ready for the newest member of your family.
Contributors
Problem Overview
There is no doubt that many pregnant mothers care about the health of their future child. Having a nutrition rich diet during pregnancy is linked to good brain development and a healthy birth weight of a child, and can reduce the risk of many birth defects. However, with increasing food variety and complexity, it can be even more difficult for mothers to know which foods, and how much of each food, they can or cannot eat. As it stands, it can be tedious for pregnant women to understand and decide what foods they should eat. Contacting doctors during their busy schedules and sifting through numerous web articles are inconvenient and unreliable solutions as doctors may not always be available, and web articles might provide conflicting information, leading to further confusion.
Our Solution — “FoodBaby”
FoodBaby is a mobile app that helps pregnant women track their daily diet and analyze their nutritional intake. FoodBaby tailors meal recommendations based on the nutritional needs of its users and offers the ability to order food from third party vendors. FoodBaby boasts a comprehensive food database, so that assessing a food’s safety levels is easier than ever. FoodBaby connects its users to a 24/7 network of medical experts, meaning that pregnant women can receive professional medical advice anytime of the day, any day of the week.
Paper Prototype, Testing Process, and Results
To see whether our solution design met the expectations and needs of our users, we first created a low-fidelity paper prototype. The paper prototype was focused around two main tasks: recording one’s daily diet, and analyzing nutrients consumed to determine lacking food group servings. Since FoodBaby is designed to be a mobile app, our sketches followed the dimensions of a typical smartphone screen. Each page and its different states were separated into different sheets of paper. By swapping around the different sheets of paper, we were able to facilitate basic actions and a user flow.
Fig 1. Overview of finished Paper Prototype.
After creating our paper prototype, we tested it with other students in class, as well as participants who were part of our target demographic — women in their 20s to 40s. We introduced participants to FoodBaby and told them to navigate our paper prototype while performing the two tasks mentioned above. Most of our feedback stemmed from minor UI issues due to ambiguous icons. These problems could be easily solved by using metaphors, as well as implementing better help and documentation. There were also some concerns about small inefficiencies in the user flow as due to information overload and redundant features. However, this was expected and could be remedied by practicing aesthetic and minimalist design choices, and streamlining the user flow.
By and large, our most salient and interesting result was that the food entry feature was poorly designed. Unfortunately, we oversimplified measuring units into cups, plates and bowls, which would make it difficult for users who are using more precise units. Furthermore, the dropdown menu for adding food amounts goes out and to the right of the screen as it does not take advantage of vertical space. As a result, the entire food entering interface was redesigned when we created our digital mockup.
Digital Mockup
Our design is centered around convenience. We wanted the interface to be as intuitive as possible. Pregnant mothers may be using our product under varying degrees of discomfort so we want to ensure that their experience is stress-free and positive through our minimalistic, flat design. This design facilitates two primary tasks: recording the user’s daily diet and analyzing the food entries to determine which nutrients are lacking or in excess. For our first task, we wanted to allow users to easily add their meals and the quantities of food they ate so the app could track calories and nutrition goals for them. This included allowing users to add, edit, and delete meal entries and enter portions for more accurate nutrition measurements. For the second task, we wanted users to be able to view an analysis of which food groups they are fulfilling throughout the day so that they know how to plan ahead for their future meals. For visual clarity, we added pie charts to show the percentage completed towards their goals.
Fig 2. (Task #1) Inputting Meals Into Daily Journal
Fig 3. (Task #2) Viewing Nutrition Analysis
After carrying out our usability testing and receiving feedback from our prototype, we realized that it was important to include details about the safety of foods that women input into the application. In order to ensure women are well-informed about what they decide to eat, we have added an additional step after they add a meal where a warning popup will appear if any of the ingredients are potentially harmful. In addition, we learned that many women may feel overwhelmed and stressed from trying to regulate their diet, so positive reinforcement is a key component necessary to make our app stress-free. Therefore we added a “success” page that congratulated the user if they reached their daily goal.
Fig 4. Overview of finished Digital Prototype.
Final interactive digital mockup: Final Digital Mockup — Figma
Summary
Through our user research, we identified that nutrition is a key concern that mothers’ have during their pregnancy. Understanding the right foods to eat and the right amounts are an essential, yet unsatisfied need. We came up with a smart daily food journal that allows mothers to track what they’re eating. This smart journal would then analyze the food eaten and provide recommendations according to each user’s specific dietary requirements. We envision this product to be a must-have app for any pregnant mother that eases the burden of pregnancy and allows them to focus on what really matters: preparing for a new member of the family.
