Process

At the beginning of this project, our goal was to combine the advantages of the iPhone with Weight Watchers in order to promote successful weight loss. We started with an interview with an ex-Weight Watchers member to find out the reason why people leave Weight Watchers. Four problems emerged during the interview:

1. People have a hard time sticking to the program because they see it as a temporary solution to weight loss.
2. Not all Weight Watchers members are comfortable with the social meetings.
3. It is time consuming to log every food item and check its points.
4. After users learn how the point system works, there is little incentive to continue the membership.

We want our design to help people both in the short term and the long term. Even when people quit the Weight Watchers program, the iPhone application may still be helpful to them. We decided to design an application to help people change their eating habits for life.

Design Introduction

The main interface of the application is a grocery list. Users can type in grocery items in the top input bar. We added automatic completion and voice recognition functions to make input easier and faster. After the user confirms one item by pressing the “+” button, the item will show on the list with its points. If there is a healthier substitution for an item the user has chosen, there will be a down arrow in the line of that specific item. By pressing that arrow, a drop down list with all the substitution suggestions will appear, with the points of each item. We chose to use a drop down list instead of opening a new page to make the changing-item process faster, because opening a new page for every item can be really annoying. If the user decides to chose one of the substitution, just press the item he/she wants to choose. If the user wants to know more about why we suggest a certain item, pressing the information icon will give them the answer.

“Optimize My List” is the fastest way for a user to making changes to the list. By pressing the “Optimize My List” button, the application will automatically change all the items into the least point items available, and show how many points user will save to make all those changes. We hope showing the points the user will save in total will be an encouragement for users to make changes. Of course, the user can choose to accept this changed list by pressing “Confirm”, or refuse it by pressing “Cancel”. Also, the user can still make changes to certain items in the list and then confirm the list.

If there is any specific item the user doesn’t want the application to suggest, by slashing the item and press the button “Do not suggest again?” will delete this item in the suggestion list and never suggest it again, unless the user changes it back in the preferences.

To better integrate this application we have thought and sketched some other features. “Daily points” will keep track of people’s daily point consumption: the user can add items from his/her grocery list directly to the daily point tracking function. “Shopping mode” will group the items in the grocery list together to help people navigate in store and shop efficiently. Preferences can help people set their personal profiles such as whether they are allergic to something, have some dietary restrictions, or they just simply don’t like certain kinds of food.

My Role

• Co-Sketched all features in the design and paper-prototyped them.
• Co-conducted three usability tests using paper prototype.
• Made appearance prototype for the application using Adobe Photoshop.

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