The journey to create a nutritional vocal assistant

8 min readJan 17, 2021

A new way to achieve healthy habits and make the tracking process more fun and immediate. Gimo is your personal vocal assistant cheering for you throughout all your journey.

00 BACKGROUND

The health and wellness industry has been experiencing immense disruption due to advancements in technology. Today’s consumers are embracing wearable technologies and other activity-tracking products more than ever before.

The omnipresence of the smartphone has spawned a massive market for mobile health and wellness apps. Healthcare-related mobile apps are becoming popular at an astonishing speed, as indicated by the fact that 69% of US smartphone owners track at least one health indicator using them.

The global health apps market size was valued at USD 12.4 billion in 2018 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 44.7% over the forecast period

01 PROBLEM

Despite the vast availability of personal metrics and health apps, people continue to struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Is there a way to improve that? Can we imagine a different way to do what already a ton of tools already do?

I choose to focus on:

Healthy eating
Diet and nutrition assistance
Weight loss coaching/assistance
Health-related data tracking

And started to conduct user research to understand people’s relationship with mental, physical, and emotional well-being to develop a tool that will drive them to action.

02 RESEARCH

From the surveys I did, has emerged that 70% of the interviewees tried to follow at least one diet of which 30% are diets to lose weight and 2 out of 5 people have food restrictions.
The main obstacles to maintaining a healthy lifestyle include: time management/working hours, emotional problems and lack of motivation; 80% of the interviewees feel stressed of which 45% often compensate with comfort food.
Also, the common frustrations in using apps for eating habits are: wasting time weighing all the ingredients, constantly updating the app and the extreme schematics.

In the six interviews I, therefore, wanted to deepen the psychological and emotional relationship with food and these were points that inspired me:

All my diets end due to lack of motivation because maybe I start not following the diet correctly and then the feelings of guilt begin that make it stop completely because “so what’s the point of continuing”, it’s a dog that bites its tail.
Probably the thing that motivates me the most is the hope of a better quality of life, socially and healthily. Starting a diet is one of the best sensations that exist, pure adrenaline, like when you are about to leave for a new journey.
It has happened to me often, comfort food is, unfortunately, my weak point and it happens very often that it has repercussions along the path of a healthier lifestyle.

03 USER

At this moment I selected the key points that emerged from my research and summarized them in an empathy map that helped me write my problem statement:

I’m a young adult living on his own, I’m trying to change my eating habits but I don’t have a clear idea where to start and what to do to reach my goals because I’m afraid to lose motivations, feel lost in the new life changes or feel annoyed by repetitive tools which make me feel overwhelmed by the thing I have to do and my good intentions.‍

04 MARKET RESEARCH

this led me to understand what is currently on the market: I analyzed several applications and I noticed that several of these do not keep track of alterations in motivation, do not have a virtual assistant and do not take gamification elements into account.‍

Now all that remains is to define what the objectives of this new digital product will be, its role, the customer segments and the solutions it aims to achieve.

‍

‍

05 IDEATION

Now the creative part of the process begins, but it is also full of doubts and second thoughts.
it is necessary to think about what our user really needs and not to load the product with many features but only those absolutely necessary. Times are tight and it is also necessary to assume certain costs and implementation limits.
I started brainstorming ideas, organized them in an Affinity diagram and poured them into the MOSCOW Prioritization diagram.

‍

‍

06 SOLUTION

This is where the magic happens.
The final idea is finalized in a more complete vision: to create a voice assistant that follows the user’s path through dialogue.
In fact, users feel a lack of support that adapts to the mutability that involves dieting, the change of motivation and mood, as well as the anxiety to look at their own results. In general, the impressions are that the tracking apps for diets are overwhelming, with too much information to navigate through and the feeling of boredom that comes with entering meals to track progress.
The solution is a vocal assistant designed to provide the user with only the information they need and support in case of problems along the way.
And why not, implement a personality, to bring a story to the users to engage them and be sure to increase the frequency of the usage of the app.

‍

07 PROTOTYPES

I sketched the main flow on paper and added screenshots as I drew alternative flows.

‍
I then transferred everything digitally and transformed only the screens with different elements into a mid-fidelity prototype. Due to time limitation and having in mind that the app was all about dialogue, I focused my attention on designing the main elements and the relationship between them, thus obtaining example screens.

08 VISUAL AND BRANDING

With all this in mind, I had the necessity to give a soul to my assistant.

It took me several searches to find the right mascot. I fell in love with the illustrations by catalyst, an Indonesian illustrator, and I took advantage of the free resources he/she had made available.
From here I arranged the main colours, a font and a name: Gimo.

‍
Gimo is a cute astronaut to accompany the user on a nutritional journey.
Gimo cares about the motivation of its user and through its playful character establishes a dialogue and be there for motivational swings, changes in daily schedules and to display information only when it is useful to the user. it is him who takes care of the technical nature, the calorie count and the food plan: the user is left with the personalization of the contents, a humanization of the traced data and a focus on his own relationship with food.

08 FINAL RESULT

To see the final product visit my portfolio ➡️ HERE 💁‍♀️

OnBoarding: Gimo presents itself to the user and the process of configuring the personal profile is started until a custom-made diet is generated.
Tutorial: Through the use of Toggles the user quickly understands the use of each button of the interface.
Meal Planner: The user consults his diet by checking on dishes already consumed or by swapping for a dish he wants to replace. In addition, by clicking on a meal, it is possible to view the tab containing the nutritional information and choose to start the guided preparation.
Nutritionist: In the settings, it is possible to enter information about your nutritionist: this will be very useful in the section “Help — Case one”.
Main Page: This section changes according to the user’s habits. For example, when it is time for lunch, Gimo will suggest which dish to eat as well as useful tips. By holding down the yellow button at the bottom, the user can talk to Gimo, for example by adding the meal they have just eaten. The user can also attach a photo, which will be used to create a visual food diary and make the experience more engaging.
Help — Case one: Through the red button on the right the user navigates to the “Help” section built for anything that may go wrong during the diet. This is a space where Gimo listens to the problem and tries to suggest ways to motivate and overcome them. If you are unable to, Gimo suggests you contact your specialist and you can make an appointment by itself.
Help — Case two: Another situation may be that of eating food out of the diet. In order not to spoil the efforts made, Gimo suggests a different dish to compensate for the nutritional plan of the day.
Dashboard: Through the blue button on the right, the user can consult graphs and statistics on weight variation, fitness tracking, water tracking and calories consumed.

All the functions can always be called up by holding down the yellow button and asking for the information to be displayed, either vocally or by typing it.

I designed an interactive prototype and included some functions for the smartwatch to complete the overall user experience.

09 Next Steps

Add features as:

Personalized notifications based on the user’s calendar commitments;
Possibility to scan products as a virtual fridge to smooth and simplify the action of adding food;