Food Photo Tracker—Using Food Photography to Give Peace of Mind

“Food is fabulous, and having a good relationship with it will make you healthy and happy.” -Denise Austin

There are so many different applications out there to track our food intake. MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, and FatSecret are some of the most popular—all following the basic framework of tracking your food intake to keep track of calories for your health goals. I have used these apps in the past and, while they definitely helped me keep track of my food, I often found myself beginning to obsess over the number of calories in everything that I ate. This obsession is one that led to the development of an eating disorder when I was 15. While I no longer suffer from this, I hold a lot of anxiety around using these sorts of trackers—worrying that I will relapse.

After speaking to individuals in my social circles about what sorts of tracking system they use for food, I found others also held similar concerns with using these popular food tracking apps.

The Problem

A person who has had or is afraid of developing an eating disorder wants something to track their food intake quickly and visually so they can feel confident about staying on track without fear of relapsing into harmful, restrictive habits.

The Process

My initial idea was to follow the layout of MyFitnessPal, but completely restructure how the food is tracked. Instead of individuals setting their food intake based on a goal weight and calculated daily calorie mark, I wanted to track food based on its nutrient density value [the proportion of nutrients in food compared to the amount of calories]. No calorie counting. No mandatory measuring of food intake. It would simply use positive reinforcement to encourage the consumption of more healthy foods, than less healthy foods—no shaming involved.

While I spent many hours developing frames for this app, I came to the conclusion the app was trying to do too much in one place—overcomplicating the very nature of what was supposed to be ‘mindless’ tracking. My concern with my Mango app was that my intended audience would still find things to obsess over when having to input food items one at a time. Whether it’s calorie count, or nutrient density, the possibility for obsessing over a measurement was there.

My final solution simplified the concept of tracking into a three step process:

1. Take a photo of your food
2. Write any notes you’d like
3. Add to a tracker that would let you visually see your total food intake for the day.

A simple three step process: 1. Take Photo. 2. Write Optional Note. 3. Add to Tracker

In this app, there is no measuring— there is not a ranking system or a defined “right way” to eat. It simply allows one to be able to easily visualize their food intake and use it for what they will. This app is not supposed to be a weight loss app. It is an app that allows the user to track their food in a quick, visual manner by utilizing the power of food photography. This form of tracking can help users feel confident about staying on track for whatever their goals are—by visually seeing their food patterns—without worry of relapsing into restrictive and harmful behaviors.

When showing the app to the same individuals I had asked about food tracking apps before, many said they felt this app would be one they could use without anxieties around obsessive tracking. Some of their favorite features were:

1. The 3-step Process: Because of how simple the app was, users told me they felt they could track and feel in control of their intake without spending too much time on it—time that could potentially lead to obsessing over it.
2. The Final Tracker: Users liked how neatly organized the final food tracker looked each day—everything organized by time. The ability to click through the days allows for individuals to clearly see their intake and make quick note if the general trend is healthy or unhealthy.
3. The Absence of “Good or Bad”: Many food tracking apps lead to viewing some foods as good or bad based on them being high or low calorie. This app does not do that—so, users enjoyed that absence of this binary on the app.

Check out the final prototype here: https://invis.io/T7EW3JQUP

Possible Next Steps

This app is in its most basic form right now, and there are definitely things I would want to modify to improve its use.

1. Changing the name of the app: Food Photo Tracker is a very literal name. And, while it’ll be clear to users what the purpose of the app is, it isn’t very creative and wouldn’t entice individuals to use it.
2. Add the option to automatically share to other social media platforms: Food Photography is a hot trend on many platforms—users may be interested in sharing some of their photos on their other social media channels.
3. Allow for users to set specific goals and self-assess their progress: On the profile screen, it now shows ‘Hourly Eating Trends’ so users can note patterns of when they eat during the day. It may be best to allow for users to select what sorts of things, besides food, they’d like to keep track of. A simple water or physical activity counter?

Thank you so much for reading!