Vittles: accomplishing a healthier lifestyle

Anne EverarsMaster Computer Science, Human-Computer InteractionDepartment of Computer Science, KULeuven, Belgium

Email: anne.everars@student.kuleuven.be

Abstract—The abstract goes here.

I. INTRODUCTION

Upon looking at the important risk factors that are relatedto illness and death in most countries, one can uncoverthat they arist from non-transitional diseases such as highblood pressure, high cholesterol, low consumption of fruitand vegetables, overweight and obesity, sedentary lifestyleand smoking. Except for smoking, these risks are related tonutrition and physical activities. Overconsumption of proteins,fats, carbohydrates and alcohol can cause an excess of energythat gets stacked in the body. Consequentially, a combinationof lowering the energy intake (what is eaten) and raising theenergy consumption (physical activities) are needed in orderto obtain a healthy energy balance. [1]

A. Dietary intake

An important aspect of monitoring the dietary intake isthe registration of what is actually eaten by the user. Thisregistration can be done manually a user can enter what he/sheate or automatically. Here, it is important that it is easy for theuser to register the dietary intake and that it does not consumetoo much time. [2]Self-monitoring is proven to be a critical skill for successfulweight management. [3] In entering what a user eats, animportant concept is that of the kCal. It is an amount thatis used frequently in the context of eating and participating inactivities.[4]

B. Energy consumption

In addition to the dietary intake, the activities of a personalso relate to the amount of calories that can be consumed orthat are burned. However, even while sitting idle (or sleeping)a user consumes energy. This energy consumption can becalculated according to the Harris-Benedict equation, whichconsiders the basal metabolic rate (BMR). For men this canbe calculated as:

88.362 + 13.397w + 4.799h− 5.677a (1)

with w the weight in kg, h the hight in cm and a the age inyears.A whole range of activities exist. And each activity burnsa certain amount of energy. This amount is, for example,proportional to the level of intensity (e.g. by running you burnmore calories than by walking) or the duration. [8]The importance of sports in relation to personal health and/orweight management is stressed by multiple studies [5], [6],[7], [8]. Regular exercise has been shown to help peoplemaintain their healthy lifestyle and weight loss more easily.

C. Setting goals

Goal setting has been shown to be important to ones abilityto control ones behaviour. [9] Setting small, reachable, butchallenging goals is an important step in keeping a person mo-tivated to keep going. [5], [10], [11], [12] The road of loosingweight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be challenging.And some days will be easier than others. Therefore, a positivestimulant is important.Working with goals has some important issues to keep in mindhowever. Firstly, goals direct the attention, efforts and actionsof the user towards goal-relevant actions. This can be at theexpense of non-relevant (but important) actions. [11] Second,making the goals too difficult to reach, can have a negativeeffect on the user. In addition, feedback is important : peopleneed to be able to track their progress. [11]People like to reflect on their daily activities, much as theydo with a diary, and they can become quite attached to it asit provides them with a better understanding of what happensand why. [13] The goal setting theory here we have to goal ofmanaging ones weight or obtaining a healthy lifestyle statesthe importance of feedback. If people do not know how theyare doing, it is difficult or impossible for them to adjust thelevel or direction of their efforts or to adjust their performancestrategies to match what the goal requires. [12]

II. GOAL

Quantified Self [14] is a technology movement that triesto accomplish selfknowledge through visualizing big dataelements, including gamification elements and using sensoryequipment in a mobile environment. By employing this in theproject, the user can be triggered to discover flaws in his/herdietary habits or activity schedule. By gaining this insight, it isdesirable that the user can draw enough conclusions and willget motivated or stimulated to turn bad habbits into good ones.This way the user can obtain a healthier lifestyle and, as a sideeffect, weight loss.

III. RELATED WORK

Currently there already exist many applications that try andaccomplish similar effects. These applications are mostly basedon the input of a user and this of both dietary consumptionand activity logging. By comparing the existing applications,some strengths or weaknesses could be discovered. This canthan be included in the design of Vittles. The following ap-plications were compared i.a.: Calorie Counter by FatSecret1,

1http://www.fatsecret.com/

MyFitnessPal2, Weight Watcher Mobile3 .Upon comparing these applications, some important criteriawere chosen. These criteria simplify the comparison and helpwith the creation of a benchmark where the important aspectsare indicated. These criteria include the options of enteringfood elements as well as activities, setting (user defined)goals, inclusion of gamifications and/or a rewarding system,retrieving reports about the users progress or status and thesocial character (integration with social media or an ’in game’friend list) of the application.As a conclusion of this study, it was found that currently onlylittle automation is employed. In addition, most applicationdo not point out weaknesses in the users lifestyle or caloricconsumption. However, connections with friends, setting goals,facing challenges and getting visual feedback appear stimulat-ing.

IV. DESIGN

For the design of Vittles it is important to consider the waywe expect users to provide input to the application. As seenin literature [15], this can be automated. This automation canbe accomplished by letting the user take a picture of the mealhe/she is consuming. This will mostly lower the amount oftime that is requested from the user. However, the accuracy isoften much lower than with manual input. Nonetheless, inputof data should be fast and easy. [2]Next to chosing the way users will enter data, it is alsoimportant to select a device that will be employed by theapplication. Herein it is important to note that mobile appli-cations are widely used and can provide a unique mechanismfor collecting dietary information that reduces the burden onrecord keepers. Also, the always-on and always-carried naturemeans that users can self-monitor anytime and anywhere. [2]This leaves the door open for either smartphones or tablets.Previously the importance of reports and feedback was alreadystressed. With this in mind, the application will mainly bedevelopped for tablets, since these have bigger screens andusers can browse through their reports more efficiently.Also, a thing to consider is when it is expected that the userenters information. For example this could be done at thebeginning of the day. When working in a prospective manner,we could focus on advising the user to eat something healthy.Hereby the role of the application would be to point out betteror healthier alternatives. On the other hand, the applicationcould work in a retrospective way. Hereby, the user would enterwhat was eaten. Consequentially an advisatory approach wouldbe less effective. In this approach it will be better to point outweaknesses and to prevent them from happening again. For thedesign of this application a retrospective approach was chosen.Finally, some design criteria were determined before startingwith the actual design of the application. These criteria areimportant elements for reaching the goal of this research. Thedesign criteria include:

• Consistency: An important aspect of any good ap-plication, is consistency. For this study, this meansthat adding a food item should by similar to adding

2http://www.myfitnesspal.com/nl3http://www.weightwatchers.be/templates/marketing/marketing utool 1col.

aspx?pageid=9119636

an activity. Also, the transitions between screens, thecoloring etc. should be similar.

• Creating entries in the caloric diary: As with manyof the reviewed applications, an important element ofthe application will be a diary. In this diary both fooditems and activities will be logged. However, addingsomething to the diary should be fast and easy. Theuser should be able to do it without having to doubttheir actions and without losing too much valuabletime.

• Simplicity: For the application I do not expect theusers to be experts in nutritional values of food itemsnor activities. Hence, the application should be easyto understand. Throwing around nutritional numbersmight be handy to some, but it can also scare offothers. Mainly in elements like own recipes, it seemsunpractical to make the user work with nutritionalvalues. The system should calculate the values auto-matically.

• Social character: The application will work with aninternal user base, where friends can be made. Thiswill not be coupled to a profile on other socialnetworks. Every user will get their own profile-page,where his/her badges and completed challenges canbe consulted by their friends. In addition there willbe a timeline-page, where a stream of updates fromthe users friends will appear. This social aspect couldthen be exploited so that users could stimulate eachother to work towards a more healthy lifestyle.

• Setting goals: The user should be able to set somegoals for himself/herself. Upon creating an accountthe application will make a suggestion. However, atall times the user should be able to adapt the goal. Inaddition, the progress should be visualized in an waythat is quick and easy to understand. Goals shouldnot only be based on a weight loss/gain target andthe user should be able to set more than one goal.When reaching a goal, the user should receive somereward. Next to actual goals, the system can registerbad habits. When discovering such a bad habit, theuser will receive an update containing a suggestion tochange it. This could make it easier for the user to findthe cause(s) of their unhealthy lifestyle and to changefor the better.

• Gamification: Badges, Challenges and Goals. They areimportant gamification aspects that will be includedin the application. They should make the applicationmore compelling, so that the user would remain stim-ulated to keep going and to work towards a morehealthy lifestyle.

V. METHODOLOGY: RAPID PROTOTYPING

For the design of the application, an iterative method waschosen. Hereby, an initial prototype is constructed and theniteratively tested and adapted, so that a final (digital) design canbe accomplished. The first two prototypes that were designed,were designed on paper. By designing on paper, it is easy togive the user an overview of the look and feel of the application

Fig. 1: SUS scale [18] with the score for the second paperprototype.

without having to spend too much time on the creation of theprototype. In case problems arise, the design can also be easilyadapted, without having to concider the technical or monetarycomplications that could acompany an adaptation.For the evaluation of the paper prototypes a combination ofwidely used techniques were used. Firstly a think aloud usertest [16] was conducted. With this test, the test person hasto perform some predefined steps and in that way navigatethrough the application. This to discover if the test personhad any difficulties with specific aspects of the prototype andwhether or not some functionalities are highlighted appropri-ately. Secondly, the user was asked to fill in a questionnaire(after the think aloud test). This questionnaire contained threeelements:

• Personal questions: to get an idea about the back-ground of the user. In this section questions about theirweight (problems) were asked.

• SUS-questionnaire[17]: to (simply and easily) getan idea of the the usability and simplicity of theapplication. The SUS questionnaire can be translatedto a score that represents the quality of the interface.An overview of meaning of the scores can be foundin figure 1.

• Detailled questions about the application: to get abetter idea of (un)needed functionalities or other issueswith the application.

After the paper prototype was sufficiently evaluated, thetransition to a digital version could be made. The digitalversion should resemble the paper version as much as possible.Again, this prototype is evaluated in a similar manner. TODO:something about the evaluation of the digital prototype.

VI. OVERVIEW OF PROTOTYPES

In this section the different prototypes that were developedare discussed together with their evaluation and the results.There were two paper prototypes developed, followed by onedigital prototype.

A. First paper prototype

The first paper prototype was designed mainly in a digitalenvironment. This was initially chosen to, on the one hand,easily get the look and feel of a digital application, and, on theother hand, since good tools exist for creating such prototypes.This prototype is shown in figure 2.This prototype was evaluated by only a little number of

(a) The main screen (b) Food diary

(c) Activity logbook (d) Report view

Fig. 2: First paper prototype

test users (four). This since the design was not immediatelypercieved as innovative. In addition, a lot of issues arised fromthis evaluation. Therefore, I decided to stop the development ofthis prototype and focused on changing the design. Importantlessons learned from this evaluation was that at that point, theapplication appeared very click based and included a wholerange of functionalities. Consequentially, the next iterationwould have to focus more on creating a smooth flow ofall operations and in addition, focus more on what the corefunctionalities are.

B. Second paper prototype

The second prototype (figure 3) introduced a different lookand feel. Mainly the stream of adding items to the food andactivity diary were completely adapted. This prototype wasdeveloped solely on paper. This made it faster and easierto develop, mainly because the tool that was used in theprevious iteration was quite limited when considering non-standard visualisations.The evaluation of this prototype was done as described insection V. There were seven test persons involved in the testphase with ages between 21 and 25 years old. Four of the testpersons had overweight and thus matched the target audience.The first issue that arised from the evaluation was that addingan item was mostly hard to find. However, there exists largeconsistency between the food diary and the activity logbook,since once the users knew how to use the food diary, theycould easily work with the activity logbook as well. Anotherthing that came up during the think aloud tests, was that itis counterintuitive to enter data (like your weight) in a reportview. Challenges and having a friend network are positivelyreceived by most test users. The SUS score of this evaluationwas 81, which corresponds to the ’excellent’ label as shownin figure 1.

(a) The main screen (b) Food diary

(c) Adding to the food diary (d) Report view

Fig. 3: Second paper prototype

C. First digital prototype

Since the second paper prototype did not introduce anymajor issues with the design or the usability, we transfered to adigital version (figure 4). This is mainly a digitalized version ofthe paper prototype from the previous iteration. Minor changesare made, so that they fit current flat design standards.TODO: write about the evaluation of this prototype.

VII. SOFTWARE DESIGN

(a) The main screen (b) Food diary

(c) Adding to the food diary

Fig. 4: First digital prototype

TODO: figures of the software design with explanation ofused technologies.

VIII. EVALUATION

TODO: the application will be used by multiple users for alonger period. The results from this will be mentionned here.

IX. CONCLUSION

In this paper a design is introduced that tries to stimulateusers of all age categories who suffer from overweight orobesity to reach a healthier lifestyle and as a consequencelose weight. This is accomplished by a system of feedbackthrough report views and goal setting, gamification aspectssuch as collecting badges and facing challenges and a socialcharacter that can be exploited to the benefit of the user. Thisdesign resulted in an mobile application, called Vitles, via rapidprototyping. This consists of different iterations, each havingtheir own design, development and evaluation phase.TODO: formulate results at the end.

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