MyFitnessPal: Case Study
Summary
MyFitnessPal is one of the longest-running and most popular fitness and nutrition apps in the world, all for its simple premise: tracking your progress. However, in recent years, users have expressed frustration with its various tools, including meal tracking, nutrition goals, and premium offerings.
Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Tools
Figma
Optimal Workshop
UserTesting
Duration
3 months
The current issues of MyFitnessPal.
The idea of tracking your meal and fitness goals should be easy, especially for those interested in bettering their own personal health.
But for many brand new users installing and using MyFitnessPal for the first time, those goals suddenly feel unattainable, as its clunky UI and UX makes it feel as though something as simple as logging meals feel frustrating.
Over the course of 3 months, I helped conduct a comprehensive expert evaluation of MyFitnessPal, using multiple evaluation and research methods. We were able to reveal notable issues that affected task flows, information architecture, and uneasy perceptions of its own tools - and then found ways to solve it through quantitative and qualitative data centered around clarity, ease of use, and more.
Cognitive Walkthrough
Revealing inconsistencies in flow and navigation.
In evaluating the basic usability of the app, we wanted to find any and all points of friction and challenges an average new user may face when performing a defined set of tasks.
This is to see if MyFitnessPal's core features are easily discoverable, usable, and provides tangible results the user can take away from. From there, we can provide recommendations to streamline the user experience and make the content and design more consistent, engaging, and effective to use.
Takeaways
Key features didn't live up to the hype.
The core aspect of logging a meal felt sluggish and unintuitive for new users, especially given how often you'd use it.
Navigation is clunky and inconsistent.
The layout is visually dense and inconsistent, making it unappealing for many new users.
Premium is woefully underexplained.
It's very easy to find ways to get Premium, there's very little to convince you to do so.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
The most downloaded health app still lags behind.
Fitness and health logging apps such as MyPlate, Lose It!, and Alma, as well as indirect competitors and influencers (such as Duolingo, Strava and Headspace) all offer similar habit-tracking experiences to MyFitnessPal, but provide an edge over MyFitnessPal thanks to its more intuitive logging tools.
Evaluating various direct and indirect competitors guided our approach in designing and explaining recommendations for a redesign that addressed logging task issues and goal setting, offering an experience for new users to feel more engaged in regular usage of the app and feel like their nutrition and fitness goals are more clear and attainable.
TREE TESTING
Only ~50% of new users could effectively navigate the app.
In narrowing our research and data to discover just how easily navigable and discoverable MyFitnessPal's various core tools are (logging a meal and viewing nutritional goals), we tested the information architecture (IA) through a tree test.
Tree Test Results
Task 1: You just had a garden salad for lunch and you want to record it in your meal tracking app. Please locate and record the garden salad for lunch.
Overall Success %
59%
Overall DIRECTNESS %
49%
TASK SCORE %
40%
Only 59% of users were able to log a food item through the search functionality. And almost exactly half were able to do so in a quick and direct manner, revealing how cluttered and overwhelming is to select meal options to log and differentiating between multiple incorrect and duplicate options.
Task 2: You want to review your weekly protein intake to see if you’re meeting your goals. Where would you go to find this information?
Overall Success %
19%
Overall DIRECTNESS %
41%
TASK SCORE %
10%
Only 19% of users were able to get to find a way to view any of their nutrition goals. A common practice of many habit tracking apps is to have the opportunity to track if what you've logged is contributing to any goals you have, as set within the app. But with how many various goals can't easily be located on a screen shows how these goals will feel harder to reach if you can't see them in the first place.
QUALITATIVE TESTING
When we asked users how they felt, this is what we learned.
To gain direct insight from users on personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences of MyFitnessPal, we conducted an unmoderated think-aloud study with 15 participants.
We asked participants to log a meal and locate their nutrition intake goals, and many of their actions, comments, and pain points were revealed.
"When I was choosing an option, I wasn't too sure which one I was looking for…So I kind of just had to guess and pick the best one."
PARTICIPANT
"I didn't even see the [goal numbers] on this…I was just trying to figure out what this chart means for me."
PARTICIPANT
Redesign
Due to our limited scope and budget, we focused on redesigning three key areas, based on our research and recommendations during our expert evaluations and testing.
Meal Logging Flow
Nutritional Goals
Premium Trial
Final Results
After testing these redesigns that aimed to improve navigation, user flow of frequent tasks, data visualization, and improved clariy on Premium features, users overwhelmingly passed and faces little issues performing the same tasks in the first phase of testing. Here are some key metrics:
NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS
39 users
VIA OPTIMALWORKSHOP
LOGGING DURATION
7 seconds faster
PREVIOUSLY 54 SECONDS
FINDING GOALS %
97% pass
PREVIOUSLY 41%
Design Recommendations
Find ways to refine the meal logging flow. With this being a task users may use multiple times a day, reducing areas of confusion and minimizing task time can improve user satisfaction.
Improve the visualization and organization of nutrition info. Allowing new users a way to easily view and digest nutritional information can help users make better choices in reaching their goals.
Improve Premium communication. Premium features are not obvious nor clearly explained, reducing user trust. Adding labels and improving visuals can solve that.