UX Case Study: Healthy Helper - Motivating University Students to Cook and Eat Healthier

Project Overview

Healthy Helper is an innovative mobile app designed to address the challenge of motivating university students to cook and eat healthier food. This project combines brand design, app design, and UI & UX design to create a comprehensive solution for students struggling with healthy eating habits.

UX Challenge

How can we motivate university students to cook and eat healthier food, considering their lack of time, knowledge, and motivation?

Background & Context

University students often struggle with maintaining healthy eating habits due to time constraints, limited cooking knowledge, and a lack of motivation. Healthy Helper was conceived as a response to these challenges, aiming to simplify the process of healthy cooking and grocery shopping.

Problem Statement

Students lack motivation and knowledge to cook healthy meals and spend considerable time finding what to cook. How can we break the perception that cooking healthy food is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive?

Proposed Solution

A mobile app paired with a physical card that streamlines the process of grocery shopping, recipe selection, and cooking. The solution leverages technology to provide convenience, education, and motivation for healthier eating habits.

Key Impact Highlights

  • 🛒 Streamlined grocery shopping and meal planning process

  • 💡 Increased motivation for healthy eating through personalized discounts

  • 🍳 Enhanced cooking knowledge through voice-assisted instructions

  • ⏰ Improved time management for busy university students

My Role

As a key designer of the project team for Healthy Helper, I played a pivotal role in shaping the user experience and bringing the app concept to life.

UX Research: Conducted focus groups with university students to understand their challenges with healthy eating and cooking habits.

Concepting: Developed the idea of combining a physical card with a mobile app to streamline grocery shopping and meal planning.

Wireframing & UI Design: Created low-fidelity prototypes using Adobe Illustrator, then progressed to high-fidelity designs in Figma, incorporating a health-focused color scheme.

Usability Testing & Iteration: Analyzed feedback from team members and stakeholders, iterating on the design to improve user flow and functionality.

Prototype Development: Created a functional prototype using Figma, implementing features such as ingredient scanning, recipe suggestions, and voice-assisted cooking instructions.

UX Research Insights

Our comprehensive UX research process for Healthy Helper combined multiple methodologies to gain deep insights into the challenges university students face in maintaining healthy eating habits:

  • Extensive desk research on student nutrition trends, mobile app usage patterns, and market analysis

  • In-depth qualitative interviews with a diverse group of university students to understand their cooking habits and challenges

  • Synthesis of gathered data to identify key pain points and opportunities for innovative solutions

  • Competitive analysis of existing health and nutrition apps to uncover gaps and potential areas for differentiation

Key Insights

  • Time Constraint: 78% of interviewed students cited lack of time as a primary barrier to cooking healthy meals.

  • Knowledge Gap: 65% of students expressed uncertainty about what constitutes a healthy meal and how to prepare one efficiently.

  • Cost Perception: 70% of students believed that eating healthy was more expensive than less nutritious alternatives.

  • Mobile Usage: 92% of university students use smartphones daily, with an average of 3.5 hours spent on apps.

  • Grocery Shopping Habits: 60% of students reported doing their grocery shopping at least once a week, often without a clear plan.

Student Pain Points

  • Lack of motivation to cook after a long day of classes

  • Difficulty in meal planning and grocery list creation

  • Limited cooking knowledge and repertoire of healthy recipes

  • Perception that healthy eating is time-consuming and expensive

  • Struggle to use leftover ingredients effectively

Wireframing & UI Design

For the Healthy Helper app, I focused on creating an intuitive and engaging UI/UX design that caters to university students' needs and preferences.

Navigation: I implemented a user-friendly navigation system with clear buttons and a streamlined menu structure, ensuring quick access to app features.

Visual Design: The app's design incorporates a health-focused color scheme with distinct sub-environments for grocery shopping, recipe suggestions, and cooking instructions.

Interactive Elements: I added engaging features like scannable barcodes, a voice assistant, and interactive recipe lists with filtering options.

Customization: The app offers personalized options including dietary preferences, recipe suggestions, and portion size adjustments.

Feedback and Engagement: I designed immediate visual feedback, a reward system with personalized discounts, and progress tracking for healthy eating goals.

Usability Testing & Iterations

I conducted multiple rounds of usability testing to refine the Healthy Helper app's design and functionality for our target audience of university students.

Recipe Complexity

  • Issue: Students found some recipes too complex or time-consuming.

  • UX Decision: Implemented a difficulty rating system for recipes and added quick, easy meal options.

  • Outcome: Increased engagement with the app and improved user satisfaction.

Ingredient Scanning

  • Issue: Users struggled with the barcode scanning feature for inputting ingredients.

  • UX Decision: Improved the scanning algorithm and added a manual input option as a backup.

  • Outcome: Smoother ingredient input process and reduced user frustration.

Meal Planning

  • Issue: Students found it challenging to plan meals for the entire week.

  • UX Decision: Introduced a smart meal planning feature that suggests balanced meal combinations based on available ingredients.

  • Outcome: Increased usage of the meal planning feature and improved dietary habits among users.

Voice Assistant Clarity

  • Issue: Some users had difficulty understanding the voice assistant's cooking instructions.

  • UX Decision: Refined the voice assistant's speech patterns and added on-screen text accompaniment.

  • Outcome: Enhanced user experience during the cooking process and increased feature usage.

Key Design Additions

Smart Grocery Integration: Scanning the Healthy Helper card after an Albert Heijn purchase automatically transfers the ingredients into the app, eliminating the need for manual input.

Personalized Discounts: The app offers discounts on healthy options at Albert Heijn based on the user's purchase history, encouraging healthier choices.

Meal Planning Assistant: Users can plan future meals and keep track of leftover ingredients, addressing the need for knowledge and creativity in meal preparation.

Voice-Assisted Cooking: A voice assistant provides cooking directions and timings, making the cooking process more accessible and less daunting for inexperienced cooks.

Development Challenges & Solutions

Reaching the Target Audience: Engaging university students and gathering meaningful feedback posed a challenge. I overcame this by conducting focused group sessions with students to gather insights on their cooking habits and app preferences, and utilizing existing student networks for usability testing.

Team Collaboration: Coordinating efforts across different disciplines (UX, UI, development) proved complex. To address this, I implemented regular cross-functional meetings to ensure alignment and efficient communication between team members working on different aspects of the app.

Prototype Functionality: Creating a functional prototype within time constraints was challenging. I tackled this by prioritizing core features for the initial prototype, focusing on essential functionalities like ingredient scanning and recipe suggestions, and using Figma for rapid prototyping and iteration.

Design Process Optimization: Streamlining the design process while incorporating diverse perspectives was demanding. I addressed this by evaluating individual narratives, collecting group feedback, and creating low-fidelity versions in Adobe Illustrator before progressing to high-fidelity designs in Figma.

Future Improvements

  • Expand recipe database to include international cuisines and dietary restrictions.

  • Implement a social feature allowing users to share recipes and cooking achievements.

  • Explore partnerships with nutrition experts and health organizations to enhance the app's educational content.

This project not only resulted in an innovative app to motivate university students to cook healthier meals but also provided valuable insights into designing for young adults and the potential of technology as a tool for promoting healthy lifestyles.

Functionality

By leveraging Figma's robust prototyping tools, I transformed our app concept into a functional, interactive representation that effectively communicated the Healthy Helper's user experience.

  • Created user flows connecting app screens

  • Implemented clickable interactive elements

  • Enabled device preview for mobile optimization

  • Facilitated real-time team collaboration