Helping kids eat better
Gigapet
Parents are always looking for new ways to encourage their kids to eat better. With Gigapet, children can watch their pet flourish or wither, depending on the food they eat.
Overview
Gigapet has made a comeback! Well, sort of. This app is a modern take on the popular pocket game from the 90s. It helps parents encourage their kids to eat healthier. Parents enter the foods that their kids eat into the app, and the kids observe the impact of what they eat on their pet.
Role
UX designer
Time frame
4 weeks
Team composition
1 UX designer
2 Frontend developers
1 Backend developer
Parental woes
“I don’t even track my own meals because of the time it takes to get through the process on some of these apps”
Noted! Parents almost universally want their kids to eat healthier. However, they don’t have an effective way to measure how good or bad the diet of their kids is, and how to help kids understand the consequences of their food choices. We all want our kids to make better choices. So, how do we do this?
Do parents want an app like Gigapet?
“I am very invested in the health of my kids. I can see this being a great tool to help teach them about food. I also think I would share this with our doctors to show them our progress”
“I’m not sure how this would fit into my schedule. Currently, I do not have a need for this”
Some parents seemed very excited about using an app like Gigapet and felt like it would be a great addition to their daily routine. Others were less enthused and felt that it would add to their already long list of “todos”.
My target audience is parents and kids who express interest in learning about nutrition, want to stay organized and want to make eating healthy fun.
How painless can we make this process?
The most common technique for tracking meals is “mental notes”. What is a mental note? How simple are our mental notes? How do we mimic taking mental notes with a mobile device?
Let’s make it suuuper simple. That way grandma can take part too.
Figure A
Above is the most common pattern people go through when they take “mental notes” of their food.
Data points that we need to incorporate are:
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Is this food healthy or unhealthy?
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Portion size: small, medium, or large?
Figure B
Above is the user flow that was developed using the most common “mental notes” pattern mentioned in Figure A.
All aboard the simple train!
Let’s keep this simple vibe going. Next, I wanted to figure out how to simplify the logging of food. No parent is going to scan every barcode on every package, or weigh every morsel of food, are they? NO.
Food groups! By using basic food categories I prevented users from getting caught up in the specifics of food types or brands while allowing them to capture the overall quality of the food. Parents saved time and cognitive load, and let’s be honest- they really need to reserve those superpowers for other things.
Simple = Happy
The consequence of keeping the process as simple as possible is that users of Gigapet can accomplish their goal in fewer steps compared to other food journaling/ logging apps.
Fewer steps = higher adoption and retention rates of users.
Pro-Tip:
Crayola color pencils are obligatory to achieving the best results.
How can I make the reminders more effective?
Brainstorming how the summary could look and function
How can I make this flow more intuitive?
Experimenting with the summary display for the web app
Exploring the visuals
I wanted this app to be colorful and engaging for kids. But I also had to keep in mind accessibility for parents and other elders that might be logging and tracking food.
Massive icons
Tiny progress bar
Everything is too small
Is there a visual balance?
How is this going to look?
Visually representing the progress of food intake with the food group buttons was challenging. I wanted to use the same color for consistency, but at the same time, I wanted to make the tap target obvious to the users.
Taste the rainbow
All the colors used passed accessibility standards. Some colors were matched with a food group based on association. For example, green is for veggies, and pink is for sweets. Other colors were chosen by visual weight in correlation to the food group. For example, purple feels visually heavier than blue so I matched purple with fats and oils and blue with protein.
A little character
Sticking to one font style made the designs consistent and streamlined the design-development process. I chose Nunito because of its playfulness and legibility (possibly the only appropriate use case for Nunito).
Cuteness overload
An army of cute animals to choose from gives kids the feeling of ownership of their Gigapet.
Progress at a glance
Displaying progress throughout the day gives parents and kids the opportunity to improve their food decisions on a daily basis.
Easy to start right away
Adding a new log and selecting the food group had a success rate of 100% during a usability test group with 12 participants. Our participants ranged in age from 12 - 52.
Tracking made simple
Being able to track the daily, weekly, and monthly average of each food group is important for parents. This gives them the opportunity to identify any fluctuations in the kids’ eating habits and the opportunity to address them.
Project learnings
Gigapet was the first project that I designed end to end. Although I was given the problem statement and MVP, I had to navigate the design process independently and think through which design methods were best suited for Gigapet. Looking back, I realize that several of my methods could have been skipped. For example, I sunk a lot of time performing card sorting, although the information architecture of Gigapet was very simple.
In future projects, I will assess the design challenges and choose the methods which are most effective at helping me gain the information that I seek. Before conducting any specific method I will ask myself “What information am I seeking?” and ”What is the best way to get this information?”.