AI-Powered Calorie Tracker and Better User Experience
More Calories Out than In
If you want to lose weight and sustain it, burning more calories than you consume is a sure way to do it. And tracking your outgoing and incoming calories may help to achieve that.
“Calories Out” Already Has Good UX
There are already several easy-to-use apps that automatically track your burned calories. Personally I like to use Fitbit for that. All I have to do is wear it (and of course exercise) and it automatically shows me how many calories I burned. Wonderful user experience!
“Calories In” Is Still Too Much Hassle
What I haven’t seen yet is equally easy way to track the intake of calories. Typically you have to weight the food yourself and record it manually.
There are apps that allow you to take photos of your meals, and provide their best guesses what appears to be on the plate. This is a step to the right direction. But still it is up to the user to measure the food and record it to the app.
There are also apps that allow you to scan the barcode and get the nutrition data there. But again it’s up to the user to tell the app the amounts. Not to mention all the fruits and other food that do not have a barcode.
All that’s too much of a hassle.
User Stories for a Calorie Tracker of My Dreams
As someone who wants to lose weight, I want to…
- track my calorie intake and see the portions of macronutrients as automatically as possible so that I can just enjoy my meal
- be able to compare my calories in vs out, so that I know what adjustments I need to do if I want to achieve calorie deficit that day
With those two user goals in mind I made a storyboard featuring a calorie tracker of my dreams. In it I just take a picture, and artificial intelligence (AI) does the rest.
AI-Powered Calorie Tracker – the Concept
If there already is an app like this in the market, or if Fitbit would someday have this, please let me know! I would gladly use it!
