Macrosfirst

mockuuups-person-in-red-sweater-holding-a-phone-mockup_edited.jpg

Project Overview

Team

Tools

Mina Hadi,

UX researcher/designer

Zaneta Gorospe,

UX designer

Elizabeth Han,

UX/UI designer

Eve Elie

Researcher and Agile strategist

Figma
Dovetail
Google Suite
Zoom
Slack

My Role

UX Designer/researcher

Time Duration

2 weeks

Anchor 1

Project Introduction

MacrosFirst launched its app in 2017 claiming to be the most powerful and easiest to use nutritional macro tracker available in the market. It provides flexibility and simplicity in documenting health journey such as creating custom meals, tracking calorie intake, water intake, and more.

This study was conducted to help MacrosFirst enhance the user experience of their free basic plan on the app so that users would be encouraged to upgrade. To help this app meet business goals, we had two weeks to improve a feature within the existing application as well as create a new one.

Preview of 2 prototypes that we designed in this project:

In Prototype 1 user will make an inclusive profile and in prototype 2 user will find buddy to share her goals and her progress with her. Second Prototype is a new feature that we added to the app.

Prototype 1

Prototype 2

Research
Survey

We conducted user surveys to understand people's behaviors and ideas about health and nutrients applications.

50% of 42 respondents tracked their nutrition goals using mobile applications
70% of them used to track their food and nutrition on an app but did not at the time of survey

We realized that the users leave the platform when they reach certain milestones or notice their relationship with food becomes unhealthy.

Challenge: After we studied people's behavior, we had to connect our findings to the undesirable performance of the MicrosFirst app. For that, we conducted Heuristic Evaluation.

We identified usability issues within the application through Heuristics Evaluation which helped us discover potential opportunities. There were 10 evaluators that were considered, 5 of which failed.

Competitive Analysis

Since MacrosFirst was not as popular as the other health and nutrition apps in the market, we evaluated its competitors and comparators who had been on the market longer. We did these evaluations to see if we can identify any pertinent features for consideration and implementation into the new MacrosFirst design.

After cross-referencing the feature inventory with our survey findings we identified 3 features that should be strongly considered in the new design. These features consisted of:

An easy login and signup process,
Food analysis and recommendations
A recipe discovery.

Comparative Analysis

We conducted comparative analysis on 3 applications who have been doing well. We studied these applications for any relevant feature for consideration in MacrosFirst.

We chose 1 feature after cross-referencing with our survey findings which was to include the log in/sign up option with a social media account.

Define

Persona

After analyzing 8 interviews with affinity Map, we turned our data to a persona:

We are going to meet Maimuna Zeem. She is 34 years old and is a program manager. Like most people during quarantine, Maimuna started gaining weight. After an annual physical, Maimuna learned that her blood sugar level was high.

She wants to go back to the gym and develop a healthy lifestyle. Maimuna is frustrated that most diet and fitness tracking apps lack access to a community or coach and also have limited food database.

Upon downloading the app Maimuna is very excited to get started, but quickly realizes that she does not know what macros mean. She tries to look for an explanation but cannot find any information on the platform which is very frustrating. While going through the onboarding process she is disappointed that it is too generic in asking if she wants to lose weight, but it does not consider her concern of elevated blood sugar and she cannot locate her favorite native dish. She also feels very isolated and tries to see if there is anyone she can speak to via the app, but unfortunately there is nothing. She quickly loses motivation and stops using the app.

Problem statement & How Might Wes

We used Map journey to understand the challenges Maimuna was facing while using these apps which led us into developing our problem statement.

Challenge: Initially we came with 3 solutions and 3 features, but we had to choose one the limited timeframe assigned to this project.

Feature Prioritization Matrix

We made our scope smaller by using feature prioritization method, keeping the developer’s level of effort and business value in mind.

Design

Since Blue and Black are dark colors, we wanted to add another liveliness primary color and also something that would compliment the blue. So we introduced gold which is the color of success and quality. We kept the original font to keep consistency and familiarity.

Usability test & Iterate

We performed 2 rounds of usability tests with 3 users in each round.

1st round

Overall impression of the app was shared as "professional" and “confusing” Overall feature that supported their experience was the inclusive questionnaire when building a profile.

2nd round

Overall impression of the app was shared as "helpful" and "has a good interface."
Overall feature that supported their experience was the inclusive questionnaire when building a profile.