VITA — Giving people the power to live better lives
Mission:
Design an App to help people improve their eating habits through a plant-based diet
Team:
4 UX Designers - Bec, Rachel, Shelley and myself
Duration:
3 weeks
Tools:
Miro, Figma, Marvel
Problem:
The existing Vita experience is only available in person.
Vita is on a mission to build better lives for its customers. They use behaviour science to help people change their habits, improve their health and reduce their risk of chronic disease. As Vita is only available in person, the current program can’t be scaled up to meet its aim of 100 million users by 2025.
Solution:
Creating a digital experience that helps people change their eating habits.
The solution focuses on taking Vita’s current in-person service and turning it into a digital product for more people to access. Vita’s mission is to empower people to achieve healthier, fuller lives through sustainable lifestyle changes and eating a plant-based diet. This will be achieved by combining behavioural science and human-centred design because Vita believes the best disease prevention is our habits.
User Groups:
We wanted to target users that we thought the app would make the biggest impact on their lives with the least amount of effort.
We identified 4 main user groups:
Young People (< 30 years old)
These users typically have just moved out of home and have developed worse eating habits from when they lived at home. They are just starting out in the workforce or are still studying and have a dispensable income but don’t spend their money on healthy food. These users would use Vita to gain access to healthier meal options that are affordable.
People who have a negative outlook on healthy eating
These users typically have developed worse eating habits over their life. They will eat whatever they want, and we wanted to see if they would be open to the idea of changing their eating habits if Vita gave them simple recipes to follow at home.
People who have set habits (nature vs nurture)
These users typically have developed their eating habits from their family and from their lifestyle growing up. We wanted to see if these users were stuck in their ways or if we could get them to change their eating habits for the better.
Confusion around healthy eating and outcomes
These users typically have eaten healthy throughout their life. They’ve tried different diets and food plans but think there is a lot of conflicting information on healthy eating. These users would use Vita for healthy eating plans and nutritional information.
Competitor Analysis:
We researched competitors of the Vita app. We wanted to compare their features and better understand what they were offering to their customers.
We identified 5 major competitors:
Changing habits — a company that started with similar intentions as Vita, to educate people on living better lives and make better choices.
Omada — a digital healthcare program that is also prevention-focused, however, has many pain points on coaching and meticulous counting.
Lite n’ Easy — a meal plan program targeted towards weight loss. They market themselves as a healthy, convenient solution for time-poor people who are too busy to shop or cook.
I Quit Sugar — an 8-week program that emphasised changing habits and removing sugar from your diet.
Noom — a program that educates people to get fit and lose weight whilst providing support and helping customers achieve their goals.
User Interviews:
We conducted 7 user interviews each, 28 in total.
From these interviews, we wanted a better understanding of who the customer was, and why an app like Vita would assist them in changing their eating habits.
Our goals were to:
- Understand the user’s current habits around eating
- Understand the user’s education level around healthy eating
- Understand the user’s food buying habits
- Learn more about the user’s motivations and emotions around eating
Affinity Mapping:
As a group, we categorised all of the key insights from the User Interviews. The best insights were coming from people’s eating habits and what drives their eating habits. However, my gut told me to dive deeper.
Upon reflection, I reconsidered the Affinity Map, as I believed there was more information that could be utilised from the User Interviews than what we initially thought.
Below are the key categories that I found the most insightful:
I found it very interesting, but not surprising, that a lot of people are influenced by what they see on social media. Some users mentioned that they use social media in a positive way to find new recipes. However, there was also a lot of negative points, such as social media is deciding what is healthy and is promoting unhealthy expectations on eating and weight.
Many users said that they did their own research online, but a lot of users also said that they find it hard to find a reliable source when it comes to eating healthy.
I learnt that our users have tried many diets and have found it hard to stick to them. Users also said that they thought diets are short term fixes and they can be restrictive. It was also interesting to see that many users have tried meal plans, but they were all negative and short term experiences.
I also found that the users don’t want to go on a diet and they also don’t want to have restrictions on their diet. This doesn’t seem like too big of an ask, so how can we make eating healthily enjoyable for the users?
Another interesting insight was that users have evolved their eating habits over their lifetime. Users also recognised that who they’ve grown up with has influenced their current eating habits, as well as their family and friends they are around now.
I found users like to plan their meals and like to find new recipes. However, their snacking habits are spontaneous and they often eat when they’re bored. How can we support the users so they no longer have these bad eating habits?
So what did we learn?
Our users can be influenced by what they see and read in their day to day lives, so how can we take this and turn it into a positive? They need a reliable resource they can count on when needing nutrition and healthy eating advice. The users also have set habits but these habits have changed over their lifetime and will continue to change. As far as meal preparation, our user’s eat healthier when they plan their meals and they enjoy finding new recipes. These were key insights as we realised that our users have the motivation to cook healthy, they just need some help doing it.
A side note:
Once we completed the project as a team we realised that the original solution wasn’t solving the persona’s problem. I decided to go back in my own time and rework some parts by myself for my own learning. It is from this point in the project that I have done this.
Empathy Map:
From the Affinity Mapping, I identified 2 personas from the user interviews. For each persona, I prepared an empathy map to get a better understanding of the differences between the users.
Persona:
I’d like to introduce Billie
Billie is a 35-year-old professional who wants to change their eating habits. They enjoy cooking and like to find new recipes, but their busy work schedule sometimes gets in the way of having time to cook a healthy meal.
Please also welcome James
James is a 25-year-old who is just starting out in their career. They like to go out and eat with friends but neglects their health when it comes to eating healthily.
So why Billie?
Billie wants to change their lifestyle. They have recognised that they could eat healthier and they want to grow their cooking skills. They like to cook at home and try to cook most nights to save money. Billie is also further along their journey to eating a healthier diet compared to James, which is why they are our primary persona, as changing their food habits will have the greatest impact with the lowest amount of effort.
Problem Statement:
Now I knew whom I was designing for, I needed to define the problem.
Billie needs assistance to prepare healthy meals because they find it difficult to maintain a healthy diet when they have a busy schedule
Solving the problem:
Billie’s problem was then broken down into a How Might We Statement.
How might we help Billie prepare healthy meals which contribute to a healthy diet?
Ideation:
With the How Might We statement in mind, I conducted a round of Crazy 8’s with 3 other participants. This generated a lot of great ideas and features that I developed further.
The key features from this exercise were:
- Give the users nutrition advice on ingredients
- Give step-by-step recipes with videos
- Cooking class tutorials
- Unlock new recipes each week if sticking to a healthy meal plan
Remembering MVP:
I created an Impact vs Effort matrix to clearly see what would be the MVP. I was very conscious I needed to solve one problem, not three, and not go overboard on features. I found this matrix a very effective way to see what my priorities would be, and also what would be my next steps for the future.
The Solution:
The concept is an app that provides plant-based recipes which will also educate the user on how to maintain a healthy diet. The selection of recipes the user can cook from are tailored to their dietary requirements, so only relevant recipes will be able to be seen. Each recipe has a step-by-step process that also includes a video for each process. The videos would be short and concise so the user can follow along while cooking.
Information Architecture:
I created a task flow and user flow before starting the prototype to help me visualise the app and site map. Learning from previous projects I found the task flow very helpful to see if I am over complicating the solution and if we are actually solving the right problem for the Persona.
Where to from here?
It’s not over yet! I’m currently working on the next phase of this project.
Check back in a few weeks to see:
- Development of a low-fi prototype
- Usability testing results
- Learnings from the usability testing and iterations
Learnings for future projects:
Being Persona focused from the start
When asking questions in the user interviews we didn’t tailor enough questions towards shaping our persona. Next time I would ask about their pain points towards eating healthy, rather than just ask ‘What do you think is healthy/ unhealthy?’
Looking back to look forward
The biggest learning I take from this project is to look back at each previous stage before moving to the next. Because we had such a short timeline at some stages we were just trying to tick all the boxes, rather than making sure each part was solving the right problem. The customer is the focus throughout this process, and that’s something I need to keep reminding myself in future projects.
Being confident in my own opinions
As I was still learning this process there were times where I would doubt myself. I put this down to a lack of confidence. Now doing this project, and taking the time to go back and do some parts of the project, I feel a lot more confident in the future to voice my opinion when it matters and to not take a back seat approach.
I can only learn from this project and I’m really glad I took the time to go back and do some parts solo. I’m still growing as a UX designer and this process has been very helpful to reflect on how far I’ve come.
