Tater Case Study

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Problem Statement

The number of whole-food, plant-based apps on the market that provide not just recipes, but also have a teaching, coaching and progress tracking element is limited.

Objective

Create a web app that helps people lose weight and get healthy, by providing lessons, coaching, recipes and biometric tracking, with an emphasis on seeing progress in users’ weight, A1C, cholesterol and blood pressure.

Research

I delved in to find out people’s pain points when eating a whole-food plant based diet.  

Here’s what I did:

  1. Interviewed 3 people from WFPB Facebook groups.
  2. Joined WFPB Facebook groups to watch and listen what people need.
  3. Did a competitive and SWOT analysis.

USER INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

  • Users have been interested in tracking their progress, but have not made it a habit.
  • Users want to measure their results.
  • Users want some type of an alert to remind them to accomplish things throughout the day.

COMPETITIVE AND SWOT ANALYSIS HIGHLIGHTS

I did a competitive analysis and SWOT profile on Noom and a Plant-Based App.   Here’s what I found:  

  • Noom focuses on behavioral change and helps people lose weight without eliminating any food groups.
  • They provide mini lessons on mindset and nutrition.
  • Online coaches help keep people accountable.

Research Insights

  1. Noom is successful because it focuses on behavior change.  I think daily lessons will help user’s succeed.
  2. Tracking results was a theme throughout user interviews and FB observations.  Adding a feature to track weight loss and other biometrics will be useful.
  3. Throughout my research, people want accountability.  Adding a feature to search for and work with a coach will add accountability.  

Analysis

Next, I sifted through my insights to come up with a strategy.  I did the following:

  1. An affinity map.
  2. User personas
  3. User flows
  4. Information Architecture

AFFINITY MAP HIGHLIGHTS

Community and Competition:  Users are motivated by having a community, someone to answer to or some level of competition.

Time Using the App:  Most users do not want to spend a lot of time using the app.

Struggles:  A pain point of users’ is navigating how to set out and eating processed food.  Offering support or mini-lessons on how to tackle both will be helpful

 

User Personas

After doing some research, I have a good idea who my users are and created 2 user persona’s.  I noticed:

  1. My target audience are women.
  2. Users are highly motivated.
  3. Users want something fun and fast to use.

User Flows

Once I got a good idea of who the user’s are, I created user flows for 3 different features.

  1. Searching for a recipe.
  2. Weighing in
  3. Setting an alert to drink water.

Information Architecture

Then, I figure out the navigation.  Here’s what I did:

  1. Created a site map.
  2. Did a card sort with 5 participants and used Optimal Sort to decipher the research.
  3. Revised the site map.

Analysis Insights

  1. Offering a daily mini lesson can help people tackle many of the pain points, like eating out and eating processed food.
  2. After analyzing the 3D Cluster View, it was clear that the navigation needed to be divided into 3 groups. The most popular category labels for each group are account, medical assistance and routine/health.  Using this information, I decided on 3 groups for my menu navigation.  My account, My health and my health coach.

Design

Lastly, I started the design process by:

  1. Creating wireframes.
  2. Completing user testing.
  3. Created a style guide.

User Testing Highlights

I created a test plan and tested 2 features in person with 6 people. I recorded our sessions.  I used an affinity map to find patterns ad used the data to create an error classification and proposed solution chart.  Here’s what I found out.

  1. People seemed to flow through the recipe section with no problem.
  2. User’s didn’t click on the + icon to add weight, so I removed the icon. 
  3. People added weight, but didn’t notice kg/lb.  Kg didn’t apply to my users and so I removed that option.

Colors

Finding colors for this app was a challenge for me.  I started out with colors from a photo that inspired me.  Turns out, those colors did not meet WCAG Compliance and Accessibility Standards.  I adjusted my colors to meet the standards, but did not really like what I created.  I finally settled on a color scheme and am very happy with the results.

Typography

Design Insights

  1. The weigh-in father was more complicated than what it needed to be,  I had to eliminate the + button and remove kg/lb option.
  2. The third user flow for setting an alarm to drink wager is not viable for this web app.  I decided to focus on other features, such as making an appointment with a coach and recording other biometrics.

Demo #1

This was my first interactive demo of Tater.  After, testing it out and hearing feedback, I decided to iterate and make a second demo.  Please check out my first attempt here.

Demo #2

This is the revised app.  I’m currently working on the onboarding screens, a biometric tracking flow and I need to get the interactions fully up and running, but take a look here to see what I have so far. 

Conclusion

It was an absolute pleasure, to speak with people, learn about their every day lives, successes and struggles with food and health.  I feel like this MVP is close to what people are wanting.  Next steps, would include adding a gamified feature to promote competition and/or ways to celebrate successful habits, as that was something user’s said they would love.  Additionally, I would need to test out the second version to see how it fares.  

Thank you for your time!

Here’s a joke for making it to the end.  

Q:  What does a nosey pepper do?

A:  It gets jalapeño business.  🙂