Fooodle — Designed to help build more sustainable eating habits from the start
Our challenge
How might we promote new relationships to food that are more secure, regenerative, and culturally appropriate?
As a part of our Global Digital Project I course, our team of students had to create a solution for the Student Design Awards hosted by the RSA. Inspired by a brief centred around sustainable relationships to food, we were challenged to create a product that allows people to build regenerative food habits & promote a diverse source of sustenance.
An innovative solution
Fooodle, a mobile app designed to help parents deter their child's picky eating behaviours one recipe at a time. We want to have impacts that are…
Social
by fostering a healthier relationship with food where fruits and vegetables are more incorporated in children's diets, and encourages home-cooked, shared meals at the dinner table.
Environmental
by diversifying our diets to be less reliant
on wheat, rice, and maize, thereby creating a stronger food system that dynamically adapts to climate and population growth.
Cultural
by connecting children to foods that are both local and a part of their cultural heritage, improving their relationship with various foods and cuisines.
Why would we even need diverse diets?
Well, Increasing the diversity of ingredients at a young age promotes less homogenous diets later on in life, leading to increased healthy nutritional intake and self sufficiency.
Research shows that parents' eating habits are the biggest factor in determining a child's diet, including its cultural influences and nutritional value. Mixed diets, especially involving a mix of cultures, can “improve appetite and interest in food” (Wong).
What do our competitors do now?
While apps like Hello Fresh and Chef's Plate make meal planning a breeze, and some platforms offer simple recipes to please picky young eaters, there's a missing piece in the puzzle. These services bring convenience and a dash of adventure to the dinner table, yet they don't dive into the analytics of eating habits. It's clear there's a big opportunity to support families looking to gently guide their kids from fussy eating to embracing a more varied, wholesome diet.
Our team analyzed the key features within each app to realize the current standard for average meal planning apps before going on to wireframing.
Prototyping through wireframes and then moving onto high-fidelity, ready-to-test product.
The design process began with a paper user-flow prototype, demonstrating various necessary features. This foundation was expanded on quite a bit, adding detailed notes and developing the elements further, leading to our first iteration of a prototype.
Using the drawn frames, we create a flow of black and white wireframes. We focused on onboarding our users, a community space, and the discoverability of recipes.
I started playing around more with our recipe book/explore page showcasing various recipes as we had a more niche idea. We weren't looking to just supply people with recipes, but allowing parents to diversify the number of ingredients their children would eat on a regular basis. Through several iterations, I figured out the best information to display upfront for our target market (which had to include a rating for ingredient diversity) and an ability to drill down to the actual recipe.
Cruelty-free testing phase
How did we make a meal planning app without allowing people to meal plan?
The value of user testing cannot be understated. Sometimes you get so close to a product it's hard to take a step back and look at the big picture. That's why getting an outside opinion from study groups is every UX-er's golden ticket.
During our prototype's user testing, we received typical first-round feedback on language consistency and enhancing visual accessibility. However, a significant insight emerged: we had missed incorporating a crucial meal planning feature.
I can access recipes, but how do I plan them out for the week?
Introducing a weekly meal scheduling feature not only streamlines grocery shopping for parents but also aids in managing their children's nutritional intake and increases diversity more effectively over time.
What if I'm worried about Fooodle tracking my child's data?
Although we've previously made the availability of the privacy policy clear, we've now made it explicit how it protects children's data.
In retrospection
For the first time ever…
I had created a fully fledged prototyped application.
Simplifying complexities
Tackling the vast issue of global food diversity, we embraced simplifying complex challenges into actionable solutions, particularly in influencing children's eating habits. This approach underscored UX design's power in initiating systemic change through focused, user-centric strategies.
Balancing privacy with personalization
Privacy feedback shed light on the crucial balance between customizing experiences and safeguarding user data. This led us to craft innovative personalization features, such as tailored dietary recipes, while maintaining strict privacy protocols, especially for children's information.
Leveraging user testing
High-fidelity prototype testing proved to be highly valuable, offering critical insights that affirmed some features and brought others into question. It highlighted user testing's essential role in refining and sometimes pivoting our design strategy, like our increased focus on privacy and scheduling.
Embracing adaptability
The project tested our adaptability, especially in managing tasks and team coordination under tight deadlines. It taught us the importance of role clarity and the need to move forward even when tasks are incomplete, ensuring team accountability and maintaining project momentum.
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