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How can I create a tool that makes consuming food rewarding enough for users with executive functioning difficulties?
How can I create a tool that makes consuming food rewarding enough for users with executive functioning difficulties?
An “Executive function” is defined as a set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. These skills are hugely important, and impact every aspect of human life. ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disorder, causes trouble in developing and accessing these skills.
ADHD also commonly causes sensory processing issues, particularly with texture, that can very often lead to pickier eating and a small pool of "safe" food options.
These two common symptoms combine to create conditions where it is a struggle to maintain a consistent eating schedule.
Therefore, I knew these users would benefit from some form of assistive technology. And, Most importantly, because adhd involves a somewhat broken mental reward system, this technology must also be fun.
Concept and Research
Concept and Research
This project started out very simply- Get to know a single person, find out a problem in their life could be alleviated with a designed solution, then design that solution. Following that, expand the scope for a greater audience.
I got to know Justin, a classmate- He’s a Korean-American nerd with ADHD, and he needed help with meal planning. He preferred to cook meals from his own culture, most of which are composed of the same ingredients in different quantities. This classmate became the basis of my first persona.
From there I realized that my app was not going to be able to follow the design conventions of a typical meal planning app. Many meal planning apps exist, but the majority of them are about storing new recipes for the user, and helping them know what to buy at the store. This approach wouldn’t solve executive disfunction, especially when, in Justin's case, every dish uses basically the same ingredients.
What i needed was the ability to avoid decision paralysis and make a decision for the user, out of a list of potentials that all sounded equally okay on a given day.
After this, the scope of the assignment expended, to include a more general userbase, while still at its core solving the same problem as before. Once my scope expanded, however, the theming and framing of the gamified aspects of the application begun to develop further.
With the random selection screen, I wanted to use a dice roll to represent the random choice for dinner, and from this one design choice, the idea to theme it around Tabletop gaming specifically emerged.
From a combination of several interviews, surveys, and informal twitter polls, I found a repeated strong affinity in the respondants for role playing games, and a high level of approval and interest in the application specifically due to this theming.
Full Disclosure: there is a high likelihood that this correlation was a result of selection bias, given that research was conducted through my personal social media, and pulled primarily from my existing following. Given my deep ties to the Tabletop Roleplaying Game community, I suspect that this trend may not necessarily bear out in a more general population.
Full Disclosure: there is a high likelihood that this correlation was a result of selection bias, given that research was conducted through my personal social media, and pulled primarily from my existing following. Given my deep ties to the Tabletop Roleplaying Game community, I suspect that this trend may not necessarily bear out in a more general population.
With the benefits of hindsight, and the knowledge that this project was an early one in my UX career, and that it never got past the wireframing stage, there are several features that came to mind later that I would include if I were designing it now.
A few of these features are as follows:
Scheduling- allow the user to set reminders at specific times to cook a meal. Reward the user for listening to the reminders, but do not punish the user for missing these reminders.
User Generated Tags- allow the user to decide what kind of meal they're in the mood for and autoselect all meals with that tag.
A button to organize the list how much energy it takes to make, using the Spoon Theory metaphor, as it seems appropriate for a food application. (note: Spoon Theory is a common disability-specific metaphor for energy availability. I would likely include a splash screen of some sort, and a persistant info icon to click on in order to explain spoon theory to any users who are unfamiliar with it.)
A quest and experience system, wherein the app might occasionally prompt you to make certain meals as an alternative to the randomly selected one, for double xp, or to use the app for a certain number of meals in a row. This would introduce some novelty and randomness without forcing the users out of their comfort zone completely.
Redesign the gamified elements to include some visualization of progress, perhaps a little wizard on the home screen that becomes more powerful and gains larger hats as you cook more.
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