AI-Enabled nutrition for a120Context
Intake (fka System One) was a team in its incubation stage in Area120, Google’s in-house startup incubator. Intake set out to help people improve their eating habits through the use of photo food logging powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Problem
Early research findings from a series of moderated, in-depth interviews and unmoderated diary studies revealed that end users were not resonating with the team’s proposed user journey. As the team’s newly appointed lead UXR, I had the opportunity to leverage both qualitative user feedback and secondary data from a systematic literature review to help the team differentiate their product and effectively communicate their value proposition to users.
Process
Diary Studies: Live interview insights and diary study data collected revealed that participants did not resonate with Intake’s initial user journey. Specifically, users were uncomfortable with a proposed meal rating framework, which involved other users rating their meal choices as ‘healthy’ or ‘treat’ to promote accountability. The findings from these studies gave the team an early signal that the proposed framework was too binary and subjective, given the individual health needs of each user. I used these findings to design a new diary study to help the team better understand how participants shape and measure their progress toward their health goals.
How Might We Workshop: The findings from this research were leveraged in my partnership with a Lead UX Designer from the Google Fit team. We ideated, discussing how we might explore new ways to frame the food logging experience to create a safer, more enjoyable product for end users. I facilitated a brainstorming session with the Intake team and the Lead UX Designer from the Google Fit team to answer “How Might We” (HMW) questions around a new product experience.
Impact
Evolving the User Journey: The team pivoted away from the binary rating system that inspired its earliest user journey in favor of a more inclusive framework informed by the user’s stated health goals. Follow-up diary studies and moderated in-depth interviews were also facilitated with a more diverse sample of users across target markets in Asia and Europe so that the team would have a more robust dataset of regional and cultural foods to inform its AL/ML algorithms for photo food recognition. The Product Managers established a close partnership with Clinical leads at Fitbit, who helped us refine our work around goal-setting and behavior change.
Reflections
Intake was the final product team I supported in Area120 before joining the Fitbit product team at the end of 2021. Much like Motus, Intake users were reckoning with the impacts of the shelter-in-place mandates of the COVID-19 pandemic on their physical and mental health. I was surprised by how many users admitted that they didn’t have anyone else asking them about their well-being during our 1:1 in-depth interviews about their health goals and behaviors. To put it bluntly, people were having a Bad Time. Users were really struggling with their mental health, particularly as it related to body image. As the team’s lead User Experience Researcher, I was uniquely positioned to escalate these findings and make recommendations so we could create a safe and inclusive user experience irrespective of where users were in their health journey. I’m most proud of how intentionally we were able to pursue this work despite timeline pressures and limited resourcing. Peers working in mental health and wellbeing verticals across the company generously gifted their time to share their learnings and recommendations with our product team so we could make the safest experience possible. I consider this a huge win!
