Overview
I did this project in Fall 2020 in this group:
Brandon Kim, Ines Acosta, Sean Perryman, and Ting Yu.
Problem
People who have allergies or other such dietary restrictions often have difficulty telling what packaged foods at grocery stores are safe for them to eat because the printed food labels and ingredients list can be difficult to read at a glance. In addition, those same people can have difficulties determining exactly which ingredients in certain foods are unsafe for them to consume.
Solution (our app)
SafeEats is an app designed to assist users who have food allergies and other dietary restrictions by having them partake in an "elimination diet" which logs the foods they eat each day and any allergic reactions or other adverse symptoms they experience. This enables them to determine which foods are safe and unsafe for them to eat.
SafeEats has 4 major components to its functionality that help its users maintain a strict diet (see images below):
1) Setting up a dietary profile
2) A camera scanner that lets users scan food labels at grocery stores
3) A product database that lets users search for and record specific foods in their daily dietary intake
4) An "elimination diet" function that helps users keep track of their daily food intake and determine which foods to avoid because of allergies or adverse symptoms
1) Main Menu screen
2) Food Label Scanner
3) Adding/Logging food items
4) Allergic reactions/symptoms
Phases of project:
1) Research [August-September 2020]
We started our project by talking to people in our target demographic and gathering information on how their daily lives were affected by their dietary restrictions and allergies.
Methods used: Semi-structured interviews + Data analysis, Observations, Hierarchal Task Analysis
2) Design [September-October 2020]
This phase consisted of designing our app through making wireframes and then making a usable prototype on Figma. During this phase, we talked to other people in our target demographic to get their input on how well our designs seemed to meet their needs for managing their diets.
Methods used: Idea generation, Sketches & Storyboards, Wireframes & Prototypes
3) User Testing [November-December 2020]
We finalized and tested our app prototype with several potential end users and got their feedback on what features were good and what features needed improvements.
Methods used: User interviews, Likert Scale questions, User Feedback
My Contributions
Research
Semi-structured interviews (remote)
These interviews were used to ask several potential end users what their lives were like having to deal with their allergies and other dietary restrictions. My interviews with users were audio-recorded and answers were recorded in Microsoft Word.
Design
Storyboards
I drew up some storyboard panels for the features of our app on ProCreate for the iPad Pro, which is pictured to the right. These storyboards cover a user going to a restaurant to order food, shopping for food at a grocery store, and eating specific foods to test if he is allergic to them - in all cases, the user is wary of his allergies.
Wireframes
Using ProCreate, I created several wireframes for multiple ideas my group came up with for the site. Ideas we had included:
-a barcode scanner to identify packaged food products at grocery stores with your phone
-screens for verifying if food products have any allergens in them that could potentially be risky to the user
-a search filter settings screen where users can pick which allergens to search for and which ones to not search for, and
-a search bar screen to let the user look through a list of matched results for food product words they search for.
User Testing
User interviews + quantitative feedback
I conducted a few user testing interviews by having a user test our group prototype, and I asked them Likert Scale questions for feedback.
Storyboard 1: Burger King
Storyboard 2: grocery store
Storyboard 3: Elimination Diet
Barcode scan + allergen alert
Search filters + search bar screen
My team and I
This is a group picture of me (top right) and my teammates Ting, Sean, and Ines (counter-clockwise from top left). We worked together on this project and the Club Collective prototype throughout the Fall 2020 semester.
