A Walk Through the Future

There exists a future where people don’t feel anxiety opening up their diet tracking app. They don’t anticipate the worst checking on their progress towards a weight goal. They don’t fear judgement via numbers or form disordered eating habits to quell the anxieties brought on by unrealistic standards. In this future, weight tracking is used to supplement health tracking. Numbers are celebrated rather than demonized. Understanding one’s body and health is the main priority rather than chasing another’s. Until we find this future, we need to proactively shift our mindset into this new framing

This case study is a search for a truly body-positive, health-centered future. It serves to hold a mirror up to the fitness industry and demand better for the users who feel ostracized by the pressure and judgement that is so often coupled with weight-related goals. Why are companies allowed to profit off of people’s vulnerabilities by intentionally designing their products to target negative reinforcement? Is it enough to plead unaware of the harm being done by the presence of numbers or do we need to raise our standards and expect emotional awareness out of the apps we interact with?

Theorists Behind the Design

This project pulls from multiple theorists in the field of emotional design, including Katherine Isbister, Don Norman, Sherry Turkle, and Sara Ahmed.

Gamification is nearly impossible to avoid today and diet tracking is one of many industries that thrives on using a reward based system to encourage continued use of a product. While games often carry a negative connotation within the current attention economy, they are not always harmful and predatory by design. Games can create a safe environment for users to explore new versions of themselves through their avatars. Such avatars can be a powerful way to evoke empathy and attachment in the user. Viscerally, the user is able to project themselves onto the avatar and see a reflection of their progress in the game (Isbister).

While using similar gamification tactics as traditional tracking apps, this case study has a notable difference in that the gamification uses positive reinforcement.

Ahmed argues that emotions are not only personal but are also formed and impacted by societal pressures (Ahmed). The numbers on a scale don’t mean anything on their own but because of the external emphasis placed on women to be slim and men to be lean, these numbers are given meaning and cause emotions to be attached to them.

What starts as a basic human drive to nourish yourself through food and movement becomes shaped by the politics surrounding ideal body images, creating a cognitive experience where negative emotions can be tagged to the innate need to maintain stasis.

Initial User Interviews

User interviews were conducted to get a sense of users’ personal emotional journeys using diet tracking apps and to better understand how the tracking process caused or exacerbated negative emotions.

Users displayed feelings of anticipation and vulnerability while opening tracking apps from the fear of seeing missed goals and feeling judged when looking at the breakdown of their calories. They noted that while they know that even if they were consciously tracking for their overall health, they still subconsciously tied their goals to their weight and felt like they were not on track if they weren’t seeing quantifiable changes in their numbers. 

One user gave their partner control of their tracking app and scale to monitor progress for them, taking the pressure off of the user by introducing a mediator who could shield them from any unwanted effects from seeing the numbers themselves. This reveals a gap in what is available to consumers right now in diet tracking and what is actually desired. This also demonstrates the lack of a dependency that users have on seeing numbers to be able to continue to progress towards their goal.

Prototyping

The prototype shows a simple, minimalist design to promote a calm environment. The isometric game, complete with the user’s virtual pet situated in its home, sparks nostalgia in the user, feeling reminiscent of earlier simulation games like Nintendogz or Tamagotchi. The nostalgia contributes to the immediate visceral reaction of familiarity and comfort.

The marketplace and currency serve as a tangible reward system within the game. This design is familiar and understandable for users to recognize there is worth attached to the coins and an ability to progress in the game.

Intentional friction is introduced before accessing the user’s raw data by prompting the user to confirm that they would rather see their numbers rather than their weekly progress report.

This seeks to create discomfort in the user, who is forced to think about what is motivating them and must reflect on whether they want to use them as supplemental information or if they want to create a story around them.

The moment of friction gives pause to sever the tie between the number seen on the scale and the way a person feels about themselves. The discomfort is aimed to confront the user with the fact that they do put importance on something that doesn’t tell the whole story. In actively choosing not to read their progress report, the user has to sit (even if briefly) with the notion that they prioritized a number over qualitative feedback on the state of their health. 

Testing with users revealed a mixed reaction, with the majority of users feeling “confronted in a health way” with introspective thoughts on what their intention is with requesting the data. One user reported feeling frustrated with the friction entirely, upset by the allusion that the app knew what was better for them. This may have been a problem with the additional friction regardless of the context as the user complained “I know what I want, so why won’t it just give it to me”, a common complaint with friction in any setting.

Conclusion

There is a gap in what is currently offered in diet tracking apps and what would provide an emotionally-sensitive experience. This case study shows that it is possible to maintain control over ones diet while removing the negative pressure attributed to numbers.

This project invites users to imagine a future where their health is truly prioritized and there is no external negative pressure from societal pressures making its way into their tracking process. They can imagine engaging in a positive reward loop as a replacement for the negative reinforcement that is currently used.