Vita Case Study
Introduction
Overview:
★ Vita wants to diversify and expand their business by helping people improve their lifestyle for the positive through an app.
★ Vita’s goal is to help change diets and food habits
Problem Statement:
★ Increasing number of deaths from chronic illness/diseases
- Perinatal an congenital conditions (birth-4 years)
- Suicide (Ages: 15–64)
- Coronary heart disease (ages: 25–85+)
- COPD (ages: 65–85+)
- Lung Cancer (ages: 45–84)
- #1 killer was plaque which causes coronary heart disease
- Diet is the area that can have the biggest impact to the above diseases
Users & Audience:
★ Current users of Vita’s service are those with chronic health conditions
- They use the In person clinics to help manage their conditions
★ Goal: To be able to help as many people as possible, across as many groups as possible to have better diets to prevent potential future health risks
Roles & Responsibilities:
★ Round 1 — Initial project was a team of 4 UX specialist working as a group on each decision and task
★ Round 2 — Independent Investigation into product viability
Scope and Constraints:
★ 2.5 weeks to complete the project from start to finish
★ The project started as a group project but was not executed in a coherent way
★ Project sponsor recommended that the UX review of the project starts again with each member of the team performing there own independent project plan
What happened:
The below process is the second chance I had to show Vita the most beneficial app for them.
Vita handed us a brief to understand how the company ran, what their goal are and how they were currently helping people.
Vita’s Business Goal is to scale the program to add as many users that it’s able to reach and support.. They want 100 million users by 2025.
Their Vision is to inspire and enable people everywhere to live free of chronic disease.
Their mission is to empower people to achieve healthier, fuller lives through sustainable lifestyle changes and finally, Vita’s values are education, honesty and empowerment.
The brief gave us some insight into research they had done as a company and what they had identified as the leading causes of deaths in age groups from birth to 85+.
The following are the 5 common causes of death across those age ranges:
- Perinatal and congenital conditions (birth — 4years)
- Suicide (ages: 15–64)
- Coronary heart disease (ages: 25–85+)
- COPD — Inflammatory lung disease (ages: 65–85+)
- Lung Cancer (ages: 45–84)
The number one cause of death across those age ranges was Plaque which lead to coronary heart disease.
Vita has identified that diet was the area that was the greatest source of positive impact on users.
Now to confirm or disprove the assumptions handed down from Vita…
The first goal was the understand certain areas of the above information so that I could fully immerse myself the process to help these users.
I started with what areas I needed to research:
- How to build habits?
- How to change eating habits?
- How to increase activity slowly and safely?
- How to help people in low times?
- How are people dealing with chronic disease now?
- Where can you help people in their chronic disease battle?
The reason why I wanted to find out the above information was because the research that Vita had done and the idea that diet was the main area to help make change meant that there was a belief that diet was a pain point for these users. So I needed to understand how and why habits come about and how they actually affect people.
Once I have defined the above areas of research I wanted to conduct, I decided to make my own assumptions as to what I thought about chronic disease, diets and lifestyle in general, so that I could understand what my thoughts were around it and try to confirm or disprove those ideas.
The below is what I assumed:
- People with chronic disease are too tired to care
- Food is a pain point for many
- Food can have different effects on different people
- Healthy food is associated with bad taste
- Your education affects your knowledge
- Social media affects diet/lifestyle knowledge
- Media sways thoughts and feelings
- Food is emotional
- Buying healthy is more effort
- Too many ingredients in healthy recipes
What More Can I learn!?
Now that I had areas that I wanted to research further and assumptions about what that research would show me, I developed a research plan to properly guide me.
My research plan is as follows:
★ How does Chronic disease affect people?
- Specifically; coronary heart disease, cancer, COPD and Suicide/Depression
★ How do you create a habit?
★ How does daily activity affect people?
- Does anything stop them from doing it?
★ How does chronic disease affect everyday life?
★ What are some things provided to those with a chronic disease?
*I would like to make note that while exercise was not a main focus for Vita and they told us not to focus on it, I thought it was important to my research to understand if exercise played a role in the lifestyle and diet changes needing to take place. I wanted to know this information so that I could pass it forward to Vita to look at for future opportunities if it affected the other key areas I was researching.
I chose to read 13 documents around the above research topics so that I could get a broad understanding of all the areas of interest to the Vita projects future.
What I found when completing the Research Synthesis was fascinating:
★ Mental health plays a huge role in how people eat
★ Diet is the number 1 factor to help people self manage chronic illnesses/disease
★ Exercise is number 2 factor to help people with chronic illnesses/disease
★ Breaking a habit is about taking the 4 steps to disengage your brain from the 4 stages that habit used to bring to you; Cue, Craving, Response, Reward
★ External influences affect dietary intake
- Nutritional information is confusing and difficult to understand
- Stress
- Interactions with others
- Socioeconomic Status
- Parental influences
- Body Image
- Mental Health
★ You have to work at changing a fixed mindset
- How do people stick to and maintain goals?
- What gets them off track with their goals?
- How do they motivate themselves to continue/retry?
★ Clearly defining your goals can help you go further
★ Setting smaller realistic goals to reach the main big goal is beneficial
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis was completed on the below companies/services as they are also trying to change people’s eating/lifestyle habits.
*This information will be used in What’s Next…
Time to understand what Users are looking for:
These user interviews were conducted in the previous version of the Vita project with my team. The discussion guide that we had created previous had such broad but valid questions on it that I knew those insights would not only be beneficial to use this time but also relevant.
Our aim was to interview people that covered 4 areas:
- Young adults — in an age range under 30
- People that had had a negative experience with food
- Those that had food habits — allergies, dieting, etc…
- People that had confusion around dieting and lifestyle
We looked at finding answers to specific questions around:
- What users thought ‘healthy’ meant
- What users thought ‘unhealthy’ meant
- Did they have a daily meal routine?
- What was their eating habits like over their lifetime?
- What impacts the way that they eat?
- What factors change the way they choose food?
- Are there emotions associated to food?
- What was their perception on diets?
I interviewed 7 people and chose to keep those insights as I knew how I asked questions, what their answers meant and I also knew that I could contact those people again if I needed clarification or to follow up.
While these areas were very relevant to what we were trying to discover in the previous version of this project, it was no longer meeting all the requirements I needed to get a full picture of the current user.
To get more information on the areas that I did research on, I created a survey. This surveys goal was to fill in the gaps that I had from my previous teams project with the new information that I needed to gather to understand what the current user needs and is like.
The survey was sent to the 8 participants that I interviewed and 2 additional people that fit into the new assumptive topics I had created.
All 9 users were from varying backgrounds but had common themes in their lives that were related to food and lifestyle; coming from a large food focused family, having bad eating habits, trying dieting, eating junk food and more.
Finding out what users are telling me:
From the Surveys and User Interviews, I had 380 data points that I was going to use to make my Affinity Map.
I chose to do my Affinity Map in the physical world rather than using a technological means such as Miro. I chose this method because it allows me to really remember the data points that I am reading and know where they go easier. You can also see all of the data at once in front of you instead of needing to zoom in and out.
Doing it physically made me feel very confident in the results that I came out with and some of the main themes that presented themselves were:
★ That their upbringing affected how they ate and viewed food today
- There were some with bad habits that were food based
- Some ate junk food once they gained their independence and moved out of home
★ Medical conditions affected the foods that they ate
★ They had very limited knowledge about nutritional or ingredient information
★ Their mood affected what and how they ate in a negative way
★ They had strong negative opinions towards dieting
★ Defined was unhealthy and healthy meant for them
Once I was satisfied that I had placed all of the insights into the correct groupings, I moved on to see if there were any broader themes that were related to one another.
- My mentor had gotten me to look at my Affinity Map as if I was making another Affinity Map on top of what I had already done. How did themes relate to one another and were any of them linked. It got me to notice if there were any overarching themes across the research I had done.
There were 3 main larger areas that appeared after doing this:
★ They grew up with a family that had a strong food culture
- This meant that when they ate alone, it made them feel low as they were missing that social family aspect they associated with food
- This was why loved ones and family had such a strong impact on their diet and food changes
★ Impacts of eating alone were all negative emotions but for different reasons
- 5/6 of the people that felt sad when eating alone also admitted that they eat bad food when feeling stressed
★ The impression and belief that diets are too expensive, meant that many associated being fat/unhealthy with needing to be on a diet but also believed that if they couldn’t afford it then they would just be fat/unhealthy, which led to poor body image
But why did these themes come about!?
There was 2 areas from the above that needed further clarification as I wanted to understand whether it was a coincidental theme or whether there was evidence to back it up that would give me more information and guidance.
Further research was done into the effects of eating alone and also influence of guardians on eating habits.
The below is the research synthesis that I came out with:
- Children are fed at a young age when they are distressed
- Restricting foods for children means they do not have full control when that food is introduced and overeat it
- Parents are the role models when it comes to food and the culture around eating
- Children decide their food likes and dislikes based on the social contexts and the physiological consequences of consumption.
- First five years of a child’s life is when they are most susceptible to eating habits forming
- Family favourites and comfort foods are instilled from a young age and are a watched behaviour
- Eating alone means you don’t feel guilty for eating it
- Feelings when eating alone depend on the reason you are eating alone and if it was a choice
- Being distracted by tv when eating means we eat more than comfortable
- Meal prepping is becoming very common with people being more busy
- Men have a higher risk than women of developing medical conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and pre-diabetes if they eat 2 meals a day alone
- Eating alone affects your physical and mental health
Although the above knowledge was not going to be used to sway how the end product was created, it did help me understand how the data points I had found had come about and also how they impacted on people.
The research gave me the opportunity to really understand where these issues start for users but also how it could potentially be helped in the future.
To better understand how many of the users I interviewed were having the same response to painpoints, I created an empathy map to better understand how many users were saying and feeling the same things.
The empathy map helped me put into perspective the areas that Vita’s future persona needing actual help in.
Thus Morgan was created.
Morgan is our Primary Persona for Vita.
They have a very interesting story:
- Food was connected to all social events in their life and meals were a significant part of the day.
- Eating alone makes them feel low and reaching for comfort foods as they miss the social family aspect
- Loved ones impact their health and food choices
- All their food information has come from family
- Complete their own nutritional research but find it confusing
- Once they left home and gained independence they relied heavily on junk food to feed them
- Social Media has promoted negative associations with dieting
Morgan’s mindset is stuck in not understanding why certain foods are ‘bad’ as they don’t fully understand nutritional/ingredient information and they are also stuck in their ways because they grew up having all their food and information told to them.
Problem Statement:
The current state of the healthy lifestyle industry has focused primarily on weight lose services and mass food production.
What existing services fail to address is the emotional side of eating.
Vita will address this gap by providing users with strategies to feel confident in all food scenarios presented to them.
Our initial focus will be to educate users with nutritional and ingredient information.
The goal is to empower Morgan:
To make informed and confident decision in the food choices that they are making today, tomorrow and in the future.
We want to create a positive food representation for Morgan as they have struggled with food their entire life up until now and give them the resource to understand what they are eating.
Next we needed to understand how we could ultimately help Morgan and what would be the most beneficial app to make!?
I created 6 How Might We Statements to start the design process.
With 3 additional people to help out, we developed Crazy 8’s to come up with ideas on:
★ How Might We provide Morgan with food knowledge?
★ How Might We help Morgan maintain positive future habits?
★ How Might We help Morgan with emotionally stimulating situations?
★ How Might We help Morgan feel confident in solo food situations?
★ How Might We make Morgan feel comfortable in social food situations?
★ How Might We help Morgan with negative food behaviours/habits?
From the above Ideation process, a list of the common ideas presented by all 4 of us was developed.
This list was then put through a Feature Prioritisation to symbolise what was part of the MVP (Most Viable Product) and what was for future development.
Vita’s MVP is not to be the fix for Morgan’s problem,
It is instead giving Morgan the tool to help them and empower them to know they can do it for the future.
For Feature Prioritisation I started with the list and assessed Level of Effort (LoE). I had a Business Analyst/Quality Assurance employee come in and help do this section as they understand the design and development side of the UX world.
They gave each feature a score between 1–5 based on the T-Shirt size method. 1 = XS and is the easiest to do and 5 = XL and is the hardest to do.
Once those scores were completed, we then did the MoSCoW method to decide if it was essential for Morgan. The features were scored 5 = Must, 2 = Should, 1 = Could or 0 = Won’t.
I then multiplied the features LoE score against its MSCW score to find out it’s rank. From the feature prioritisation the MVP was evident.
The MVP for Vita is as follows:
★ Recipes for different difficulty levels
- Can choose your difficulty level but automatically start out as beginners to not overwhelm user
- Recipes and videos for single portions/can choose how many it is for. Default is for one
★ Quick Food education
- Every day when you log in, you get a food fact.
- Each recipe will also have food facts
★ Barcode reader (with search function)
- Scan ingredients/food and find out information about it.
★ Log in / Sign up
★ Home Page
★ Settings (account/notifications/camera access)
★ Saved/Favourites/My list
★ Meditation to lower stress/emotions (Used when Morgan is feeling particularly overwhelmed)
- Daily Encouragement/reminders
- Every Morning you get a happy day reminder
- Every evening you get a good night message
- Make it so it is personal and part of their overall experience and not just an app in the background
What emotions can we plot for Morgan!?
To better understand how Morgan feels when making a food choice, a Journey map was created to see where the pain points were plotted.
The main area that Morgan had an issue with was choosing foods to eat that they deemed as healthy or not.
The below Journey map shows that Morgan feels the lowest when trying to decide what to prepare with the ingredients that they have for 2 reasons. The first reason is that they don’t always know how to cook that food item and the second is that they don’t understand what the nutritional panel is telling them about their food.
Ultimately when Morgan feels overwhelmed they reach for the easiest option which is Take-Away.
Once I knew where Morgan needed help, I created a flow of how the Vita app would work to make sure I was meeting all the current needs of Morgan through the app.
The App flow is as follows:
★ Open app and it goes straight to the home page
★ Home page has options on it — main use = barcode reader
★ Open barcode reader
- Scan items in your shopping/kitchen
- This will provide you with a bunch of information about the product itself
- Save items to a ‘my items’ page
★ When you save an item you are prompted to sign in/sign up
- This is to allow users to scan food so that they don’t feel locked in to a service
★ Home screen you click on ‘my items’
- Opens up a list of the items you have saved from scanning/searching
- These items when clicked on bring up:
- Large picture, name of product, important product information
- Drop downs
- Recipes
- Nutritional Information
★ Recipes
- Are linked with ingredients but can also be searched for.
- Recipes have facts about the food in the recipe at the bottom (quick education)
- Drop down with nutritional information
- Have different difficulty levels
★ You can save recipes and items/ingredients
★ If you’re feeling overwhelmed from choosing foods — choose meditation section and do some mindful breathing to bring yourself back to centre
★ Every morning you will receive a notification from the app that has a positive affirmation for the day
★ If you haven’t scanned an item or looked at a recipe for a while you will receive a we miss you — come and show us what you’re eating reminder.
Getting the Vita App solution onto paper…
Next was to start sketching the wireframes that would make up the Paper Prototype.
I spent some time going through Google images to get some inspiration for how I wanted all of the Vita pages to look.
Once I had a vague idea of how it should be laid out, I created some basic sketches to get my ideas out.
Once I had completed that step, I took those initial sketches and turned them into the polished paper prototype below.
I used InVision to create a clickable paper prototype to then be used in the Usability Testing.
To test the Paper prototype out on users, I created a Usability testing guide.
I devised 5 tasks/scenarios to put forward to my 3 testers:
- You are at the supermarket and have found a packaged food item that you would like to know more information about.
- How would you do that using the Vita app?
2. You remember that you have previously scanned an item and saved it.
- Please show me how you would find that item
3. You notice that while you are on the scanned product page that there was a recipe you would like to make.
- How would you go about finding that recipe?
4. You are feeling a little overwhelmed, how might you use the Vita app to help with that?
5. The barcode scanner isn’t working for your product.
- How would you still use the Vita app to find out information for the product you are holding?
To make sure I was assessing the Vita app in the best way possible, I used Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection; Error Rate, Success Rate, Types of Errors, Likes and Dislikes for each Task/Scenario.
The results overall were quite positive with some great feedback which led me to the follow iterations to be made:
- Instead of ‘capture’ button under the barcode reader, it was changed to ‘scan barcode’
- A ‘Save’ button was included on the recipe page
- Added the recipe star rating to the recipe page itself and also the preview recipes under the product information
- Added photos into the barcode search function for easier readability
- Added Vita log to menu overlay for brand awareness
To truly capture the Iterations needed and the direction the Vita App was taking, I created a Figma Mid-Fidelity Prototype.
The below is a link to the Vita App. You will be able to see where it has been refined and also iterated on from the paper prototype.
I hear you asking, but What’s Next…
The first step in the Vita Mission to reach 100 million users is around education but also helping users when they feel emotionally stimulated. By having the barcode reader to provide understandable information to users, recipes that they can cook with that and then also save those items for future use, we are empowering Vita’s users to feel confident in the choices they are making. The meditation portion of the app is to start small in giving users a way to start feeling more emotionally stable without it being too overstimulating in itself.
While there is evidence that meditation of some form would be beneficial in guiding users towards feeling more emotionally stable. It currently doesn’t work with the flow of the Vita App. I will explore in the future where the meditation will play a part and even look into doing a partnership with an existing meditation/mental health app to tackle the issue from a professional angle.
For now I will put it to the side and reassess down the path.
The next steps for the Vita app are to ramp up the information that is being provided by introducing food quizzes. These Quizzes will help give small bursts of information to the users to help them slowly gain a lot of knowledge.
Once we feel confident that the user is being provided with enough information, a food tracking system will be implemented.
This will allow the user to make food goals, whether that is based on what they want to eat, what they want to stop eating or just a general goal they wish they were meeting.
In that next step with be the introduction of a sticker reward system where users can track if they have hit their food goals for that day. These will be tracked in a calendar so that you can see your progress. Rewards were proven to help motivate users to reach their own goals so we’re utilising this step to help users reach the food goals they ultimately want to meet.
Further down the Vita App history there will be the introduction of sharing options, to show your progress to others but to also do the journey with other people, again pushing the motivation factor further.
All of the above next steps for Vita and many more have come from the Feature Prioritisation completed earlier
The Vita app is being created to first help educate users into what is actually in the food they are eating and help them feel more informed when making food choices.
Secondary is to help them with emotional instability by giving them options to become grounded again through meditation and then later connect with others to create a community.
Finally the introduction of the food goals/tracking will allow users to be able to fully understand and see what they are consuming and start to see where and how they can make changes.
The Vita App is about helping but ultimately it is about giving the tools to let users being empowered enough to live without fear or not knowing without needing an app to tell them!
Thank you for reading.
Please visit my Portfolio to see where this project and many more are heading…
