nourish.
A new way to heal your relationship with food.
OVERVIEW
The Problem
Men and women alike often have a complicated relationship with food due to pervasive diet culture and unrealistic portrayals of health. Often, this can lead to disordered eating habits. People struggling with disordered eating face limited access to support, both in their community and from a professional, that could help them heal their relationship with food.
The National Eating Disorders Association cites that
20
​
million
​
women
&
10
​
million
​
men
will have an eating disorder during their lifetime,
but only 1 in 10 of them seek treatment.
As a result...
of anorexics die within 20 years of contracting the disease
20
%
of Americans know someone with an eating disorder
50
%
of ED sufferers have a concurrent mental health disorder
97
%
of those suffering fully recover with appropriate treatment
60
%
?
HOW CAN WE IMPROVE ACCESS TO SUPPORT?
Solution
I designed Nourish, a mobile app that empowers and supports users suffering from disordered eating by providing a safe space to cultivate a healthy relationship with food. It also connects users with a supportive community, helps increase their mindfulness, and access nutritious recipes to help them meet their recovery goals.
WHEN WAS THIS?
December 2023 - February 2024
WHAT DID I DO?
UX Research and Design Lead
WHAT DID I USE?
Adobe Suite (Ai, Xd, Ps)
Microsoft Forms
Personalized Education
Get a personalized learning journey to guide you through your unique healing process.
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Nourish collects information during your onboarding to better understand what disordered eating patterns you struggle with and what you want to achieve. This way, we can create a custom plan with educational materials tailored to your specific needs to ensure you get the tools you need to build a recovery that lasts.
Community at Your Fingertips
Engage with a supportive community to learn from each other and stay on track.
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You won't feel alone on your journey to recovery because you will have a community of people who are going through the same thing. Together, you can support, comfort, learn from, and help each other all the way to success.
New and Exciting Recipes
Learn to chop, slice, and dice your way to a healthier relationship with food.​
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See popular recipes in the community and try something new to add to your weekly menu. Nourish provides an endless variety of nutritious recipes, without having to worry about calories or macros or any of the guilt that you may have come to associate with food.
My Approach
01
02
03
Research
Design
Assess
Surveys
Informed brainstorming
Usability Testing
Interviews
Iterations
Sketching & wireframes
Affinity mapping
User feedback
Reflection
Personas
Hi-fi design
Interactive prototype
My Role
Tackling this solo passion project meant I had to play the part of the Lead UX Designer and Researcher for this project, which can be overwhelming. I broke my process down using the double-diamond approach, starting with conducting user interviews, synthesis sessions and brainstorming sessions before attempting to craft a solution.
I created sketches, wireframes, high-fidelity designs, and interactive prototypes for user feedback & testing. I also took all of the feedback I received to iterate on the process, conducting more testing sessions, until I felt that the design accurately solved the problem statement defined in the research phase.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
I first looked into any similar competitors to see whether or not existing products can help provide the education and support that many people suffering with disordered eating need.
I found that:
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Apps similar to Noom and Weight Watchers contain the educational resources and community support features that people love, but the content is generally focused on weight loss which is unhelpful for those struggling with eating disorders.
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People really enjoy being able to have a coach or community support feature to help them not feel isolated in their journey.
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Some existing apps, like Recovery Record, only offer clinician counseling if it is already set up with your external clinician. Individuals without access to quality healthcare are unable to use this very helpful feature.
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People really enjoy having customizable options and things generally tailored to their needs.
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Therefore, I hope to create a tool that can tailor to the needs of individuals, to help give them their own unique plan to help educate them on how to improve their relationship with food, offering robust communal support along the way.
Surveys & Affinity Mapping
To better understand how individuals struggling with disordered eating currently handle their problems, I created a brief anonymous survey to inform my design process before diving into solutions. I posted the survey to several online eating disorder support forums to get results from a breadth of people. Check out the survey here.
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I used the survey findings to begin an affinity mapping session, so that I could brainstorm solutions based on my findings.
My survey ended up getting results from about 23 people who have been struggling with several different forms of disordered eating for varying amounts of time, ranging anywhere from 6 months all the way up to 12 years. I found that:
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Even those who have been struggling for a long time have tried and failed to reach recovery through various forms of support.
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Individuals usually want to have some sort of guidance to help show them the way to recovery.
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Some people want to have access to a personal coach in addition to a strong community so that they can receive both individualized mentoring and group mentoring.
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Some people have difficulties knowing what meals are going to help nourish their body, so they want to have access to a repository of simple recipes to help them along.
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Because of these difficulties, a number of those suffering with eating disorders choose to keep trying to recover from their disorder on their own; others end up foregoing treatment altogether, even when presented with a partial solution.
Personas
To better guide my design and enable myself to better empathize with my users, I further synthesized the survey results and came up with the following personas:
DESIGN
Ideation
With my research findings and personas in mind, I began to brainstorm solutions. I tried to come up with as many ideas as I could without considering how realistic they were at this stage; I only thought about the wants and needs of the users and how I could integrate them all into one solution.
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After spending some time ideating, I went through the ideas and considered how realistic it would be for each piece could interact with each of the others. For example, having real professional coaches available on demand 24/7 sounds like an amazing idea; however, I want the app to be accessible to as many people as possible without a subscription fee, and while this feature sounds great, it would also be costly to hire enough certified nutritionists to be available around the clock. Therefore, a compromise would be coaches who will still respond to you, but it may take several days to get back. Perhaps there could be an option to pay for quicker support, but it shouldn't be a requirement to use the app.
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Eventually, I settled on the following core functionalities:
Create custom learning journeys based on their goals
Collection of recipes with ratings and easy to follow video tutorials
Goal tracking and achievement system to reward progress
Personalized mentorship from professional nutritionists and counselors
Community message boards and groups to discuss issues of interest
Readily available quick buttons to easily take you to your favorite activities
Sketches & Wireframes
I quickly drew out sketches with these functionalities to see how I could incorporate them into my design.
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I created the following wireframes and brought them to potential users for feedback.
User Feedback & Revised Design Goals
All users liked the mentor chat feature and the ability to speak with community members. This was reassuring for me, since these two functions are part of my key focus, and what distinguishes my app from existing apps that offer a similar purpose.
Empowering Users
For some users, it was not immediately clear that the lessons were personalized to meet their specific needs. They seemed to think that it was a list of recommended courses, rather than an actual educational plan that is meant to inform their recovery process.
Some users were also confused by the placement of the quick buttons versus the bottom navigation bar. They were worried about the amount of features that would be buried within layers of menus, and wanted a simpler way to navigate through the app to ensure that key features are easily accessible. They enjoyed the concept of the quick buttons, but not the placement or where the buttons lead to.
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Since the goal of my app is to help people feel like their recovery is individualized and easy to manage, I decided to rework the design to make it more immediately clear what the app is doing with no explanation necessary.
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After talking with more users, I came to understand that one of my most important goals is to empower our users to take action over their own life and recovery without added fear of failure.
Refined Design Goals
I refined the design goals and matched the features I hoped to implement to the goals I wanted to achieve:
High-Fidelity Design
For the first iteration, my primary goal is to validate whether the design helps different types of users feel more confident in the curriculum, feel comfortable browsing the community boards, as well as be able to quickly navigate through the app to find what they're looking for. I also hoped to test the usability of the design, so that I can improve upon it further.
I used Adobe XD to create a basic interactive prototype to illustrate enough functionalities for me to test my hypotheses.
ONBOARDING
MAIN LEARNING FLOW
SOCIAL & MENTOR CHAT
RECIPES
EVALUATION
User Testing Process
With the goals I had for this iteration in mind, I moderated user feedback sessions with 5 users with different degrees of experience with disordered eating treatments and support networks.
Here's a brief overview of the process:
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Introduce the project goal, and put users at ease.
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Describe the scenario, set up the context, and let users use the app while thinking aloud.
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Ask follow up questions and gather feedback.
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Let users fill out a questionnaire. Thank them for participation.
Measuring Success
To assess the design's success in a quantitative manner, I broke down the design objectives into specific, measurable targets. Subsequently, I devised a questionnaire aimed at providing insights to address these objectives.
Results
I was able to gather a lot of positive feedback on the prototype, from users with different backgrounds, experiences with treatment, and different degrees of severity in their disordered eating. Here's a summary of how people rated their own confidence, comfortableness, and satisfaction while using the app:
In addition, 5 out of 5 users believe that the tool will gradually help them learn about helpful tips and strategies on overcoming diet culture mindset.​ All of them also expressed that they would recommend the app to others, affirming it is a much needed alternative to existing apps such as NOOM and Recovery Record in fostering healthier relationships with food.
REFLECTION
Future Steps
After several rounds of iteration and feedback, it would be worth continuing the cycle in the future. Based on this latest round of usability testing I think the following would be great next steps to take the design of this app even further to improve the overall user experience:
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Continuously gather and analyze user feedback to guide app improvements and updates
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Explore adding new resources and interactive tools based on user needs and emerging trends
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Enhance the app's ability to deliver personalized support tailored to each user's preferences and stage of recovery
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Collaborate with mental health professionals and advocacy groups to expand resources and reach
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Regularly assess and improve accessibility features to ensure inclusivity for all users
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Conduct studies to evaluate the app's long-term impact on users' recovery journeys and well-being
My Thoughts
Designing this app presented various challenges, notably balancing comprehensive support and an abundance of exciting features with user-friendliness. By adopting a modern design and incorporating user feedback every step of the way, we prioritized usability without compromising on depth. Peer support features were added based on user input, enhancing the app's social support aspect, as well as personalized learning pathways to help empower users to help themselves.
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I believe this app can significantly impact users by providing accessible, evidence-based support. Moving forward, I aim to refine and expand the app's features based on ongoing feedback and emerging research.
This project has been extremely rewarding, teaching me valuable lessons in user-centered design and the importance of empathy in the process, especially when it comes to solutions that touch upon mental health.