Interface Re-Design “My Fitness App” Kristen Kuron Dr. Gibbs, JMA464 Assignment 2

How I found “My Fitness App”  Talking with a friend one day about how she was able to drop 60 lbs. Downloaded a “calorie counter” app on to her phone  Searched “calorie counter” in android play store  My Fitness was the first app  Expected a simple calculator and calendar  Got social app with account user name, and terms of service agreement and invitation send outs to facebook friends

Interface Goal:  The app was created and design to track the amount of calories digested, and set a goal to lessen the amount of calories to digest so that over a period of time the user could lose weight by calorie portion control.

Target Audience  This app targets people who wish to loose weight. It allows the user to set an amount they wish to lose. So this app is open to people who want to lose a lot, to people who want to lose a little.  The people who use this app would most likely consist of people who don’t know how to lose weight and need help. The app would be the help.  People who need help losing weight could be people who can’t control what they eat, people who eat too much, people who’s body type may just be genetically heavy. Or people who want to drop five pounds but aren’t so dedicated as to exercise.

Tasks 1.Setting Goals 2.Tracking what you eat. 3.Looking up the amount of calories a particular food has. 4.Storing recipes. 5.Outlining balanced meals for the day. 6.Monitoring nutrition intake. 7.Sharing experience or losing weight together with friends. 8.Exercise tracking and burned calorie monitoring.

Interface  The interface is designed simply: there is one color, blue, with a grey scale for buttons, text and background. There are green and red items to indication good and bad. Easy to read and gets the job done.  The pages are grouped by categories. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are separated on the diary page. The calorie counter is separated from the news feed on the main page, etc.  This is a touch screen interface. A keyboard pops up when needed. The Navigation system is relative to the type of activity you are doing: tracking, social, settings, etc. Than it is a linear flow from there. There is a menu in the upper left portion of the screen at all times.

In the App screen shots:

Things I didn’t like:

Dashboard My Fitness gives a goal of calories for the day, to help you lose your prospective weight. No immediate indication of where to start. Had to click the dashboard line, and then the screen greyed out, and the plus sign popped up with the hint.

You’d Weigh Completion: I accidently said “complete this entry” thinking that I was telling the app I was done entering my food for now. I had only had coffee and the app went directly to the entry complete for the day. At first I thought, the app was congratulating me on my few calories for the day. It took me a while to notice the warning at the bottom of the page.

Notification: There is no hints or indications on the screen before you press “complete this entry” or during your day to tell you that you need to be consuming more calories.

Searches I searched for vitalite water, and I spelled vitamin water incorrectly as “vitumin water”. The search provided no entries. The search didn’t recognize the misspelling nor did the search bar give me suggestions so I had to switch to Google.

Terms and Agreements: It is daunting that the user has to create an account, but on top of this, the user has to agree to terms and has a big list in front of them right away. I was reluctant to agree to them. All I wanted was a simple counter—not an entire new facebook.

Re-design

What I wanted to focus on:  I wanted to make this app simpler. As it was, it was like learning to use an entire new Facebook. I didn’t need Facebook. I just needed a calorie counter.  Focuses:  Make social media and terms & agreement, a smaller part of the app  Dangerous dieting habits notification: if the user isn’t eating enough calories, have a more obnoxious notice, instead of alerting them after their day was through.  Entrance Dashboard: make it resemble more of a menu to alert you to all available options.  Search function: while the search function did show you foods that you have eaten and searched for, when a search failed it gave no suggestions.

Pages to Re-design: 1.New User Welcome and Set Up 2.Main Page Dashboard

Welcome / Entrance Page  Immediately the user sees that they need an account to use this app, or that they will need to connect it to their Facebook.  Nice if they want a social aspect, other wise too much work.  There should be an option to work off of device memory

Terms and Agreements:  The user shouldn’t be show all this text.  This shouldn’t be the second thing the user sees  Hide text, just show text box and link to terms if the user desires to read

Sign Up:  New order: state name, gender and age first, adding the terms of service as a check box and link at bottom.  Than move on to weight and height, then lose/maintain/gain weight, then how much, than how active and final congratulations page  Less set up windows  Makes more logical sense.

Main Page  Looks like a dashboard  Looks like it is trying to imitate a Facebook newsfeed  Doesn’t give you any obvious available actions/paths  Main/Home page needs to have available options. The focus should be on losing weight, not socializing.