ANI
UX Research | illustrator | copywriter
a healthier lifestyle right just a click away
Meet your AI-powered nutrition coach: personalized health advice that fits your lifestyle—no crash diets, no giving up your favorites, just smarter choices for a healthier you!
Note: some sensitive topics such as eating disorders may be touched upon
Overview
Meet your ultimate AI nutrition coach, tailored to help you enjoy a healthier lifestyle without compromising your favorite foods.
Our focus is to provide accurate, actionable information that helps you make informed choices and adopt small, sustainable habits for lasting health.
Mikah Chavez
Emma Reige
Raul Rodriguez
— members
— role
Lead UX Researcher
Illustrator
Copywriter
— duration
2 months
UX RESEARCH
ANI was created with a straightforward goal: to help you make small, lasting changes to the foods you already love, ensuring a healthier lifestyle that’s easy to maintain long-term. Instead of promoting restrictive or harmful diets, ANI empowers you to log your meals and recipes effortlessly. From there, it offers personalized recommendations to subtly improve your nutrition, keeping your meals both enjoyable and nutritious.
But ANI is more than just a meal planner. It’s designed to be a holistic health assistant. You can log your sleep, track exercise, and even connect your favorite health apps for a comprehensive view of your lifestyle. By analyzing this data, ANI provides tailored insights, allowing you to see how small tweaks in one area can significantly improve your overall health. With ANI, healthy living becomes accessible, practical, and—most importantly—sustainable, supporting you in building habits that last.
Background
Identify User Needs and Preferences: Research to understand the specific nutritional needs, preferences, and challenges of target users for more effective personalization.
Streamline Logging Processes: Ensure meal and health logging is intuitive and user-friendly to enhance accuracy and ease of use.
Enhance Personalization and Engagement: Use insights to refine AI recommendations and improve the app’s interface for a more engaging and relevant user experience.
Monitor Behavior and Impact: Assess how ANI’s recommendations influence user behavior and health outcomes, using feedback to make continuous improvements.
Goals
How can we help people make sustainable, healthier food choices while allowing them to enjoy the meals they love, without relying on restrictive diets or overwhelming changes?
Additionally, How can we leverage AI to provide personalized, actionable health insights that guide users toward small, sustainable changes in their lifestyle, while ensuring the process remains easy and enjoyable?
problem statement
Secondary Research: Review current information on diet culture, tools for meal logging, similar lifestyle apps, and the integration of physical objects into digital services.
Primary Research: Conduct surveys and user interviews to identify user challenges in adopting healthier habits and to gather insights on desired features and needs.
Market Research: Analyze existing services and tools that provide similar health and nutrition assistance.
Usability Testing and User Feedback: Assess the ease of use of meal and health logging features, identifying any usability issues or barriers through user feedback.
Methodologies
The science of habit creation
To gain a deeper understanding of habit creation and maintenance, we delved into research on habit formation, including key insights from James Clear's Atomic Habits. Clear's book provided valuable strategies for building and sustaining habits by emphasizing the impact of small, incremental changes and the power of consistency. By applying these principles, we developed our approach for ANI to help users adopt and maintain healthier lifestyle habits effectively. This research informed our design choices, ensuring that ANI supports users in making gradual improvements that are both manageable and sustainable over the long term.
User interviews and surveys conducted revealed significant shifts in attitudes post-COVID-19 toward healthier lifestyles and diets. Many users reported an increased emphasis on maintaining better health as a result of the pandemic, with heightened concern for adopting healthier eating habits. However, they also expressed struggles with body image issues and the pervasive impact of diet culture, often finding restrictive diets to be unsustainable and counterproductive. These insights highlighted a need for solutions that support gradual, realistic changes rather than extreme or restrictive approaches, reflecting a growing demand for practical, long-term strategies to achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle.
User Interviews
UX Design
To tailor ANI to real user needs, we created two vibrant personas that represent our target audience. Marta, a 22-year-old student from Madrid, is determined to embrace a healthier lifestyle while savoring her favorite foods and avoiding drastic changes. Her goal is to find a balanced approach that fits seamlessly into her busy life. On the other hand, Jose, a 28-year-old student in Madrid, has previously overlooked his health but now seeks to get organized with his meals in a manageable, health-conscious way. By developing these personas, we gain a deep understanding of their unique aspirations and obstacles, allowing us to design ANI with precision to meet their diverse needs and help them achieve their health goals effectively.
User Personas
To enhance user experience and create a more engaging interaction with ANI, we incorporated hand-drawn illustrations into the app. These illustrations provide a friendly "face" to the assistant, making it feel more approachable and personable. By integrating these custom visuals, we aim to infuse ANI with a fun, unique personality that resonates with users and makes their experience more enjoyable. The hand-drawn style not only adds a touch of whimsy but also helps establish a cohesive visual language throughout the app, making the interface both inviting and memorable. This approach ensures that ANI stands out as a friendly and supportive companion in users' health journeys.
visual language
copywriting
In the ANI project, UX copywriting plays a pivotal role in shaping how users interact with and perceive the app. As the voice of ANI, the copy needs to harmonize with the hand-drawn illustrations that give the assistant a friendly and approachable personality. My role involved creating a language that not only complements these whimsical visuals but also resonates deeply with users, guiding them through their health journey with clarity and warmth.
Effective UX copywriting requires a blend of soft skills, including empathy, creativity, and attention to detail. It’s about crafting messages that speak directly to users' needs and emotions, fostering a sense of connection and trust. By ensuring that the copy aligns with the playful and supportive tone of the illustrations, I aimed to make ANI feel like a genuinely helpful and enjoyable companion. This alignment is crucial for creating a seamless and engaging user experience, where the visual and verbal elements work together to reinforce a cohesive brand identity. The thoughtful integration of UX copy and illustrations helps make ANI not only functional but also a delightful and motivating tool for users striving to improve their health.
Introducing Fridgebox by ANI: the innovative phygital addition to your ANI experience. This intelligent tablet attaches effortlessly to your fridge and connects to your ANI app with just a few clicks. Simply install the sensors inside your refrigerator, and Fridgebox will elevate your experience to a whole new level. Powered by advanced machine learning, Fridgebox scans the items in your fridge and identifies what you’re missing for your planned recipes throughout the week. With a single button press, you can seamlessly add all the needed items to your shopping list. It’s never been this easy to stay organized and keep your meals on track!
Fridgebox
Fridgebox was a key deliverable in our project, designed to further support users in building and maintaining healthy habits. By seamlessly integrating with the ANI app, Fridgebox helps users manage their refrigerator contents and stay on track with their meal plans. Its intelligent scanning and shopping list features aim to simplify the process of making nutritious choices, ultimately helping users achieve their goals and sustain lifelong changes toward a healthier lifestyle.
Usability testing
Conducting usability testing for ANI was a crucial step in refining the service to ensure it meets user needs effectively. We meticulously planned and executed a series of tests with real users to evaluate how well the app’s features, including the meal and health logging functions, performed in practical scenarios. By observing users interact with the app and collecting their feedback, we were able to identify any usability issues, friction points, or areas for improvement. This hands-on approach provided valuable insights into how users engage with the app, allowing us to make informed adjustments that enhance the overall user experience.
In addition to testing the core functionalities, we also assessed how well the Fridgebox integration worked in conjunction with ANI. This involved evaluating the ease of installation, the accuracy of item scanning, and the effectiveness of syncing with the ANI app. The feedback gathered from these tests was instrumental in fine-tuning both the app and the Fridgebox, ensuring that they work seamlessly together to provide a smooth, intuitive experience. Through this iterative process, we aimed to deliver a service that not only meets but exceeds user expectations, supporting their journey toward healthier living with maximum efficiency and satisfaction.
Usability testing Results
After analyzing the results, the design team broke the information into various categories with the accompanying iterations that needed to be made:
Ease of Navigation: Users found the app generally easy to use, but had difficulty locating the meal logging feature. A clearer label or more prominent button is recommended.
Clarity of Instructions: Onboarding was smooth, but users needed more detailed instructions for setting up Fridgebox. Adding a comprehensive tutorial could improve this process.
Functionality of Features: Meal logging and health tracking features performed well, though users experienced occasional delays with Fridgebox syncing. Enhancing sync speed could improve user experience.
User Engagement: The app is engaging, but users would benefit from more personalized tips and motivational messages to increase regular usage.
Integration Experience: Connecting Fridgebox to the ANI app was straightforward, but the initial setup process was longer than expected. Simplifying this process would enhance user satisfaction.
Performance and Speed: The app generally performed well, but there was a noticeable lag when loading meal history. Optimizing performance in this area is recommended.
Overall Satisfaction: Users are pleased with the app and Fridgebox, but additional customization options for health tracking would be appreciated.
Key takeaways
Given that our team was predominantly made up of designers, I was tasked with developing both the visual and written language of the app. To ensure a balanced workload, I concentrated on creating copy that met the team’s needs while aligning with the overall design. Adapting to the design choices within our constrained timeline posed a significant challenge. Despite these constraints, my goal was to integrate the language seamlessly with the evolving visuals to enhance the user experience.
If additional time had been available, I would have revisited several design elements and extended the research phase. This would have included more in-depth exploration into the Fridgebox integration, as well as further user collaboration to refine its functionality. By conducting additional user feedback sessions and research, we could have better integrated Fridgebox and optimized its utility to more effectively support users in their health journeys, ultimately making ANI a more remarkable and user-centric product.
challenges
One of the key lessons learned was the critical need for diverse UX profiles in a design project. Our team, predominantly composed of visual and UI designers, initially struggled to emphasize the importance of comprehensive design elements, as the focus leaned heavily towards UI and functionality development. Since I was responsible for research as well as the visual and copy language, it was occasionally challenging to navigate discussions and assert the significance of these elements, as they sometimes lost priority among the team. This misalignment led to some conflicts but ultimately fostered improved teamwork and a deeper appreciation for each stage of the design process. Additionally, it illuminated previously unrecognized "blind spots" in our approach. The tight timeline, compounded by holiday breaks, further challenged our efforts but highlighted the importance of thorough planning and collaboration in achieving a successful outcome.