Eatcue
Happy decisions for your wallet and food
Role
Full-Stack Designer
Timeline
2023 (Mar - May)
2023 (Dec - Jan)
Skills
Product Design
Interaction Design
Prototyping
For the first time, they take the full reins on what, where, when, and how they want to eat.
The project started as a result of my personal frustration with overspending on unhealthy foods, leading to a guilt that trickled into decisions affecting my personal and social well-being.
The Challenge
How can I help college students in NYC make healthier food and spending choices that align with their goals?
The high-level goals that defined my design
1. Make good decisions easy and time-efficient
2. Make healthy habits actionable
The solution
Learning to make better decisions with Eatcue
Eatcue is an app that makes taking the first step to better wellness and health easy. Through digestible lessons and activities tailored to personal goals, users learn to make food decisions they can be proud of once and for all.
Personalized experience
Personalized learning generates a lesson plan that can best help users achieve their personal definition of healthier eating, which was shown to differ across individuals during research.
Low-commitment learning
68.8% of students surveyed reported time as an influential constraint for their food choices. By engaging with short lessons wherever and whenever, they can learn to make better decisions with as little sacrifice as possible.
Rewarded behavior
A quantitative measure of progress and rewarded behavior helps keep the user aligned with their goals by introducing a positive reinforcement cycle.
Bridging the gap between intention and action
Decision fatigue builds up and it becomes increasingly harder to make good choices as the day goes on.
By reinforcing every new concept with actionable quests to help users take the first step...
...and implementing a decision framework for them to fall back on...
Eatcue guides you to make good decisions easily.
Research
Understanding the problem
I conducted interviews and sent out a survey, sampling the viewpoints college students had towards healthy eating, how they made decisions about their food, and what goals they had for their eating and spending habits.
Organizing the notes, quotes, and data from my research through affinity mapping.
My research led me to a few emerging patterns that guided my direction:
#1
I care about eating healthily, but how I define and approach it is dependent on my personal goals.
#2
Eating out makes me feel more connected with my friends, but it conflicts with my other goals.
From this, I concluded...
Inefficiency is standing in the way of making better food decisions, and good habits are taking too much effort to execute on.
This begged the questions of
- HMW improve the ease and time-efficiency of making good decisions?
- HMW make healthy actions actionable?
…leading me to the high-level objectives that guided my design of Eatcue.
Organizing the notes, quotes, and data from my research through affinity mapping.
Design
Designing a simple and manageable experience
I designed the main flow with first-time users in mind, introducing them to the key features while having it feel simple and manageable. Adhering closely to a set of product constraints helped me set a focused approach:
The app is
- For learning about different healthy eating strategies
- For providing guidance in making more mindful decisions
- Meant to be low time commitment
The app is Not
- A tool for meal prepping / budgeting or any specific strategy
- For telling you what the right decision is
- A task you need to plan your time around
The user journey map reflects the first-time user’s flow, onboarding them through a personalization process, having them take their first lesson, and completing their first quest.
Creating the brand:
A playful approach to health
Taking inspiration from the natural colors of vegetables such as cauliflower, spinach, and sweet potatoes, I created an experience that signaled wellness and health with a playful approach. The copy language is considerate and conversational.
Mascots
Utilizing the playful aspect of round shapes, I created the mascots in Figma. They help guide users through the experience, becoming their friend for the long journey that lies ahead.
Notable explorations in design
Product and design decisions are embedded in every element on the interface, and I hope that my passion for craft can be transmitted across the screen as you experience the app. Amidst the numerous iterations, there are 3 meaningful explorations I want to talk through.
Which features should go on the nav bar?
In ensuring an intuitive user flow that felt intuitive and well-connected, I iterated on several approaches to the user flow, conducting user testing at each stage.
How can I create emphasis by visually differentiating the home screen?
The home screen dictates a large chunk of how the user will experience the app. I needed to find a way to differentiate it from the other pages while still adhering to the established themes and layouts.
Behold, the final 4 contestants out of 19 iterations!
How can interactions help users map out the relationship between different screens?
By exploring various screen transitions, I played with the different ways users could experience the space within the app. The spatial relationships and hierarchy I wanted to establish between screens informed my decisions in which interaction I used.
Hover over the screens to play
Opening a lesson...
Viewing lesson plan...
Navigating to rewards...
Opening a lesson...
Viewing lesson plan...
Navigating to rewards...
The final prototype
Ready to make your best decisions with Eatcue?
Conclusion
Learnings and future plans
about the timeline
It’s been a year since the initial kickoff of this project in March 2023. Within a 2 month time frame, I went through the end-to-end process of designing a product and published the first instance of Eatcue’s case study. After getting valuable feedback from an interviewer and several designers, I decided to revisit the project December 2023, challenging my prior decisions. This included
- Creating new synthesis and insights from my research
- Iterating on visual explorations and features I didn’t have time for before
- Pivoting towards a new and more focused direction for the app.
Special shoutout to Jayli for being an amazing mentor throughout this process :)
What's next?
Eatcue has developed alongside my growth as a designer, but there is still more to be desired.
For example, I’d love to explore...
- How might social influence become a larger part of this experience?
- How well would this approach work for students living outside of the city or young adults that have graduated from school?
- What’s the user retention like and how can I encourage users to complete their lessons?
One of the most fruitful parts of this project has been learning about the ways product informs design and vice versa. Moving forward, I'm most curious to see how new problems within the space I want to explore will continue to evolve my design.
Thank you :)
Feel free to flip through my Figma file if you’re interested in the process.
