Overview
UnPicky is a university project designed to aid users in having a better relationship with food.
My final idea was to create an app aimed at picky eaters primarily after childhood that would like to try new foods but need support doing so. On researching further I found there was a huge lack of apps targeting these people. The apps recommended for adult picky eaters are diet apps that you can enter in your requirement and it will set you a meal plan without these foods.
I did find apps and websites to help parents deal with picky children which became very helpful when studying the do’s and don’ts for picky eaters.
Role
Product Designer
User Research
Prototyping
Pitching
The Problem
There are no statistics on the amount of adult picky eaters also known as PEAs this is thought to be because of the stigma around being a picky eater, there is also not much interest in the field. By the age of five most kids stop being fussy about what they eat and try a great range of foods, but some never grow out of being picky. In fact 75% of picky eaters have been so since they were children. Being a PEA is now classified as selective eating disorder, it can cause sufferer to become malnourished, obese due to poor diet choices, and can also put a strain on their social lives as so much of our life is accompanied by food. Picky eaters often have bad association with certain foods or are over sensitive to the taste and smell of food in general. Picky eaters can also be quite stubborn as it takes an average of ten tries of a food to like it whereas they might only try a food once and decided straight away. Often the key to solving PEAs problem is to get them more comfortable with food, such as them learning how to cook interesting and fun meals themselves.
What I hoped to achieve
To help picky eaters branch out of their comfort zone with food. To teach picky eaters to cook foods they don’t like in different ways.
Use Encouragement and behaviourist methods to change habits
Using rewards for finishing challenges.
How I'm saying it
The general tone will be factual and empathetic to a subject that may be quite sensitive for picky eaters. The app will be reward based and goal orientated. I want the layout to be modern and minimalistic, too much colour can be a little hard to look at. I want the tone to be factual to convince users that they try new things everyday why should food be any different.
Why would people want this tool?
Its quite normal to be picky as a child, but when it continues into adulthood it can be quite challenging. PEAs often can be reprimanded or picked on for "eating like a child" rather than encouraged to try new things. Extensive research has shown there are no apps tailored specifically to PEAs, this market gap could be filled by UnPicky.
Flowcharts
To start developing my app I first started flow charting the general pages that I wanted to include. The first flowchart was very messy with a Motivation page that I eventually chose to remove. In this version I had challenges that changed every week, a Recipe Book that would work as a rewards page as well as holding your saved recipes and giving you the option of doing the initial survey again.
My final flowchart (to the right) is a simplified version of my original application. I chose this because it’s not too complicated or page-heavy it gives the user enough to work with without bombarding them with different elements.
