LogYourEatingHabits: A Dietary App Focusing on Eating Habits

that Promotes Healthy Lifestyles

Mohammad Safiul Alam Toaha

and Way Kiat Bong

Department of Computer Science, OsloMet, Oslo Metropolitan University, Pilestredet 35, Oslo, Norway

Keywords: Eating Habits, Healthy Eating, Dietary App, System Usability, User-Centered Design.

Abstract: Maintaining healthy eating habits is essential for the overall health and well-being across all ages. While

mobile dietary applications offer assistance, their complexity of meal logging and often poor design limit

widespread adoption. This study presents the development of a mobile application, named

LogYourEatingHabits, which is designed to simplify meal logging and emphasize both meal content and

eating patterns. Emphasis was also placed on ensuring high usability and accessibility in the application,

making it usable by as many user groups as possible. Using a user-centered design approach, the application

was iteratively developed and improved throughout feedback from 16 participants over five iterations. Each

iteration provided new insights, leading to enhancements such as more consistent design and interaction of

user interfaces, and increased intuitiveness and user-friendliness. The System Usability Scale (SUS) scores

showed improvements across iterations, and together with observation and interview findings, they indicated

overall high perceived usability. Future works include expanding the food database, optimizing the image

recognition feature and providing personalized feedback based on data gathered within the app.

1 INTRODUCTION

Mobile applications (apps) have emerged as a

promising tool to assist individuals in monitoring

daily diets. However, the complexity in meal-logging

and complicated user interfaces appear to be

significant barriers to the widespread adoption of

these technologies (König et al., 2021). Most mobile

dietary apps focus on what we eat, not when and/or

how we eat. Studies have shown that the duration and

pattern of eating have an impact on our health

(Mattson et al., 2017). There are many positive health

benefits linked to various dietary strategies, like time-

restricted eating, which involves consuming all food

within an 8–10-hour window instead of a 12–14-hour

window. Potential benefits of such eating habits

include increased energy level, improved sleep

quality and reduced body weight for those who need

better weight control. Many user groups, such as

elderly people, busy professional, and students, face

the risk of not maintaining healthy eating habits.

Here, the term “habit” refers to the routine of eating,

instead of what one eats.

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5323-8576

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3714-123X

Despite the growing use of mobile apps for

tracking food intake, significant usability and

accessibility challenges remain (König et al., 2021).

Many existing apps often fail to provide simple and

user-friendly interfaces, which can limit long-term

usage. Particularly for older adults who often find

these interfaces confusing or difficult to navigate

(Aure et al., 2020), they are more vulnerable to poor

dietary habits. For users of all ages with limited

digital skills, user-unfriendly interfaces make

navigation within the apps complicated , leading to

reduced long-term use of these apps (Wei et al., 2020).

For a mobile dietary app, usability is crucial in

determining how effectively users interact within an

app and a lack of easy to use design often leads to

negative user experiences (Fuglerud et al., 2018). The

term “easy to use” implies that end-users can

understand, learn, and navigate across the interfaces

with minimal effort. While most apps emphasize

logging food intake and providing nutritional

information, they often overlook important factors

such as when and how meals are consumed (König et

al., 2022). Eating habits are essential in affecting

216

Toaha, M. S. A. and Bong, W. K.

LogYourEatingHabits: A Dietary App Focusing on Eating Habits that Promotes Healthy Lifestyles.

DOI: 10.5220/0013211000003938

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE 2025), pages 216-223

ISBN: 978-989-758-743-6; ISSN: 2184-4984

outcomes such as energy levels, sleep quality, and

weight management (Longo & Panda, 2016).

To address these knowledge gaps, the aim of this

study is to design and develop a mobile app that

focuses on logging both meals (what they eat), and

eating times and patterns (when and how meals are

taken). This app, named LogYourEatingHabits

emphasizes easy of use for a diverse audience,

considering variations in age, gender, culture, and

other socio-demographic factors. We acknowledge

that it is impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all

solution, but the intention is to make this app usable

and accessible to as many user groups as possible.

2 METHODOLOGY

In this study, we adopted user-centered design (UCD)

approach, which allowed us to actively involve users

to ensure the design meets the needs of its target

audiences (Gould & Lewis, 1985). This approach

guided the design and development of the

LogYourEatingHabits app, following the four key

phases proposed by (Benyon, 2019): understanding,

envisionment, design, and evaluation. Figure 1 shows

the overview of entire research process, detailing the

four phases of UCD. We describe the details of each

phase in the next section.

Figure 1: UCD processes used in this study.

2.1 User-Centered Design Approach

The first phase of UCD focused on understanding

usability and accessibility challenges in existing

dietary apps. To achieve that, we conducted a

comprehensive literature review and analysis of

existing dietary apps. The next phase, i.e.,

envisionment phase involved brainstorming and

conceptualizing the design of the app, informed by

the insights gained from the understanding phase.

During this phase, several low-fidelity prototypes

were created to explore different design options and

user interface layouts. These prototypes helped

visualize the app's functionality, navigation and user

interaction, ensuring that the design addressed the

usability and accessibility challenges identified in the

understanding phase. These prototypes provided the

foundation for the design and development of high-

fidelity prototypes in the next phase. These early-

stage designs focused on structuring the app flow and

key features.

In the third, i.e., design phase, a high-fidelity

prototype was created. The high-fidelity prototype

included detailed user interface design elements to

ensure that LogYourEatingHabits was not only easy

to use and accessible, but also functional and

responsive across different devices and screen sizes.

This phase also includes making changes to improve

on the design. Lastly, evaluation phase focused on

gaining inputs for continuous improvement in design

(the third phase) through user testing. This phase was

essential in ensuring that the app met its usability and

accessibility goals.

2.2 Recruitment, Data Collection and

Analysis

User testing (evaluation phase) and process of

improving the prototype (design phase) were repeated

in five iterations. Using convenience sampling,

participants were recruited from a diverse socio-

demographic backgrounds to ensure a range of

perspectives and user experiences. They were

informed about the objectives of the study and briefed

about their participation. Consent must be given prior

to participating in the study. Before user testing, we

collected demographic data, including participants’

self-rated digital skills.

User testing in each iteration involved

participants performing specific tasks, which

included logging meals (both manually through a

menu, and using images from their camera or

gallery), accessing the food diary, and using the

reminders. To access the food diary, participants had

to navigate to it and review their logged meals to

observe their eating habits over time. For the

reminders, participants were first asked to set and edit

reminders for meal times. When the reminder alerted

them, they were then required to log their meal. These

tasks were designed to reflect real-world use cases,

concerning the usability and accessibility of the app.

When they performed the testing tasks, we observed

how they completed them. Questions were asked to

clarify and gain more insights using a semi-structured

interview guide after they have completed the tasks.

The System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnai-re

was used to provide a quantitative assessment of the

LogYourEatingHabits: A Dietary App Focusing on Eating Habits that Promotes Healthy Lifestyles

217

app's usability (Brooke, 2013). After each user

testing, participants were requested to complete the

SUS questionnaire, which included 10 questions

rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Scores for positively

worded statements (odd-numbered items) were

computed by subtracting one from the participant's

response. For negatively worded statements (even-

numbered items), we subtracted the participant's

response from five. We summed these individual

scores and multiplied the total by 2.5. SUS scores,

along with observational and interview data from

each iteration, were analysed to guide iterative

improvements, enhancing ease of use and usability in

each new version of the app

3 RESULTS

3.1 Participants

Table 1 presents the demographic information of all

participants, and their participation in this study. The

participants represented user groups of diverse

backgrounds in age, education, digital skills and

experiences in using dietary app. All of them used

smartphone daily. In general, we noticed that younger

participants generally learned to use

LogYourEatingHabits quicker, while older

participants required more time to become familiar

with its features. Differences in digital skills also

affected their learning and user experience when they

first started using our app. Participants with

experience using dietary apps like MyFitnessPal and

Fitbit (P1, P3, P7, P8) found the app easy to navigate

around, while others with no experience with any

dietary app (P2, P5) provided more feedback on

making the design easier to use. Although all

participants came from different socio-demographic

backgrounds, they all shared a common interest in

improving their eating habits.

3.2 Understanding

In this first phase of the UCD process, usability and

accessibility challenges of existing diet-logging app

were identified and gathered through a literature

review. This review highlighted several common

issues that helped shaping the design of the app,

ensuring a more user- friendly and accessible app for

a diverse range of users. Table 2 summarizes these

issues and how we targeted to address them.

3.3 Envisionment

Figure 2: Low-fidelity prototype.

In this phase, several low-fidelity prototypes were

developed based on the insights gained from the

understanding phase. Figure 2 demonstrates some of

these prototypes, showing the early-stage designs.

Key features included food logging, profile settings,

and diary management. Using simple paper sketches,

the research team explored and discussed different

layouts and designs, before landing on the final

decision of the design of the first iteration.

Table 1: Participants’ profile.

Tester Age Gender Education level Digital skill level Participated in

iterations

Other

P1 29 Male Master’s degree Advance

1,2,3,5 Familiar with dietary app MyFitnessPal.

P2 62 Male High School Intermediate 1,2 Unfamiliar with any dietary app.

P3 28 Female Master’s degree Advance

1,2 Familiar with dietary app Lifesum.

P4 37 Female Doctorate Degree Intermediate 2 Familiar with Lifesum, MyFitnessPal.

P5 55 Male Bachelor’s degree Intermediate 2 Unfamiliar with any dietary app.

P6 50 Female Vocational Degree Novice 2 Unfamiliar with any dietary app.

P7 21 Female High School Intermediate 1,2 Familiar with dietary app Fitbit.

P8 42 Male Master’s degree Intermediate 1,2 Familiar with Fitbit.

P9 49 Female High School Intermediate 3 Unfamiliar with any dietary app.

P10 24 Female Bachelor’s degree Exper

3 Familiar with Fitbit.

P11 29 Female Bachelor’s degree Exper

3 Familiar with Lifesum.

P12 32 Male Master’s degree Advance

4 Familiar with dietary app Lose It!

P13 24 Male Bachelor’s degree Exper

4 Familiar with Lose It!

P14 63 Male High School Intermediate 4 Unfamiliar with any dietary app.

P15 19 Female High School Intermediate 4 Familiar with Fitbit.

P16 71 Male Master’s degree Intermediate 5 Familiar with MyFitnessPal.

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3.4 Design and Evaluation

In these two phases, high-fidelity prototypes were

developed and then evaluated. These processes were

iterated in five iterations. During evaluations, users

performed testing tasks such as logging meals,

managing diary entries, and setting reminders.

Automated testing was conducted, ensuring that each

design improvement and new features were

thoroughly tested before user testing of each iteration.

This testing allowed for early detections of possible

accessible issues. The qualitative results (observation

and interview) about design and evaluation of each

iteration are detailed in the following sub-sections,

along with figures showing the evolution of the user

interface and features.

3.4.1 First Iteration

In this first iteration, key functionalities, such as

manual and camera-based meal logging, accessing

food diary, as well as reminders, were implemented.

With the camera-based meal logging feature, users

could log their meals more easily. The reminder

function included an alarm and in-app notifications

that prompted users to log their meals according to

their preferred mealtimes. These features were crucial

as the app aimed to focus on users' eating habits, not

just what they have eaten. Metaphorical icons, such

as a camera symbol for image-based food logging and

a food symbol for choosing a pre-defined meal from

a list, were used in conjunction with text labels to

make user interfaces easy to understand. To provide

a seamless experience across different screen sizes

and orientations, we implemented a responsive design.

Figure 3: Screenshots of the high-fidelity prototype in the

first iteration.

Figure 3 illustrates the prototype in this iteration,

with the home page on the left and the meal menu

page, where users can choose a meal to log, on the

right. During the user testing, the participants

identified two main issues. First was the inconsistent

scrolling function on the food diary page. Second was

the need for a larger search bar in the food diary.

3.4.2 Second Iteration

Improvements were made to the scrolling function on

the food diary page to ensure its consistent operation.

The width of the search bar was increased as well. A

new feature implemented in this iteration was to add

a home button at all pages, so that navigation could

be enhanced to ensure smoother transitions between

interfaces. Figure 4 illustrates the updated interface

with improved navigation and usability based on user

feedback from the first iteration.

Table 2: Identified usability and accessibility issues through literature review and proposed approaches to address them.

Identified issues Approaches to address identified issues

Lack of user involvement during design and development

process causing poor user experiences (Almoraie et al.,

2024).

Adopts a UCD approach in this study to ensure the app

meets users’ needs.

Many apps had complex user interfaces, hindering user

understanding and navigation (Aure et al., 2020).

Designs simple, easy-to-use user interfaces to simplify

navigation and reduce complexity.

Inconsistent menu layouts hindered navigation (Choi et al.,

2021).

Implements consistent menu layouts with navigation paths,

and features like a home button for easy access.

When it comes to data presentation, users were confused by

too much information at once (König et al., 2021).

Considers users’ cognitive abilities when organizing data

presentation.

Many apps did not meet accessibility standards (Fuglerud et

al., 2018).

Follows WCAG 2.0 guidelines, and ensures clear contrast,

descriptive labels, and accessible UI elements.

Real-time nutritional feedback was lacking in many apps

(Wei et al., 2020).

Integrates real-time nutritional information, allowing users

to instantly see the nutritional value of their meals.

Users found manual logging time-consuming and user-

unfriendly (Simpson et al., 2017).

Implements image-based logging, allowing users to upload

pictures from mobile phone camera or gallery to log meals.

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Testers noticed that there were a few pages missing

the home button, and that include the search food

diary page (refer to Figure 4 on the right) and the

meal menu page (Figure 5 on the left).

Figure 4: Improvements made, i.e., a functioning scroll

bar and increased width for the search bar.

3.4.3 Third Iteration

In this iteration, we ensured all pages had a home

button; One of them was the meal menu page, as

shown in Figure 5. During user testing, participants

suggested adding confirmation messages for

successful meal logging and sorting the food diary

by date, with the most recent entries appearing first.

Figure 5: Adding home button to the meal menu page.

3.4.4 Fourth Iteration

Figure 6: Snackbar notifications to confirm successful

logging of food entries.

Building on previous feedback, this iteration added

two new features i.e., snackbar notifications for

successful meal logging (Figure 6) and sorting the

food diary by date. We also implemented the

support for multilingual to make the app accessible

and usable for non-English speakers. Testers in this

iteration appreciated the ease of use of the app. To

make the app even better, they suggested including

date-based search features in the food diary.

3.4.5 Fifth Iteration

In addition to testing all functionalities, we placed

extra focus on assessing the enhanced search

functionality. These enhanced features allowed

users to search by date and food item directly within

the food diary, as illustrated in Figure 7. In the user

testing this iteration, P16 suggested to add a search

icon next to the text “To search your diary, click

here” on the food diary page, making it easier for

users to understand how to use the feature. This

suggestion was incorporated in the last version of

prototype, as shown in Figure 8. He also suggested

that a summary feature to provide users with an

overview of their eating habits over a specified

period, highlighting eating patterns, caloric intake,

and nutritional balance. In addition, P1 noticed an

inconsistency in the design of a button. On the

notification preferences page, an add icon was

placed instead of a home button.

Figure 7: Improvements made to the search functionality.

Figure 8: Search icon added on the food diary page.

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3.5 System Usability Scale (SUS)

The SUS scores ranged from 65 to 90 during

iterations, indicating acceptable to high levels of

perceived usability. Participants who engaged in

multiple iterations consistently reported improved

SUS scores in later iterations, reflecting the positive

impact of the ongoing improvements and

modifications made to LogYourEatingHabits. Table

3 summarizes the SUS results of all participants.

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Usability and Accessibility Issues

Previous research has consistently highlighted the

importance of usability as an essential factor for the

success of mobile health apps, particularly for older

adults and users with lower technical proficiency

(Aure et al., 2020; Fuglerud et al., 2018). These

issues were related to navigation, food logging

functionalities, interface clarity, and so on. Our aim

of the study has always been making the user

interface as simple as possible. This has resulted in

testers in our study perceived the app as easy to use

and all of them were satisfied in using it for the first

time. Similar to the findings by Fuglerud et al.

(2018), our findings confirm that improving the

clarity of the interface significantly enhances

perceived usability and then user satisfaction.

We implemented a key accessibility feature, i.e.,

multilingual support, which is an important yet

often missing feature in many mobile health-related

apps. Research has shown that language barriers can

prevent non-English-speaking users from

effectively using health apps (Hughson et al., 2018).

By integrating multilingual support in the third

iteration, we ensured that LogYourEatingHabits

was inclusive for non-English-speaking users. Some

usability issues pointed out by the participants in

this study were align with design guidelines and

principles. This clearly indicates that we could have

had conducted a heuristic evaluation before

proceeding with user testing. The observation of

icon placement inconsistencies in both second and

fifth iteration indicates the importance of

maintaining interface consistency, a usability

heuristic proposed by Nielsen (1994).

4.2 Contribution to Research and

Practice

This study contributes to the existing research about

mobile dietary apps by focusing on the feature of

eating habits rather than solely on meals, and by

addressing usability and accessibility issues found

in current mobile dietary apps on the market. With

the use of reminder and food diary features,

LogYourEatingHabits focuses on logging eating

habits, an aspect that has been relatively neglected

in many dietary apps. By looking at both nutrition

intake of each meal, and eating patterns (how often

and when meals are taken) can offer new

possibilities for further research. To the best of our

knowledge, the only app that has the same focus is

myCircadianClock. However, according to Gioia et

al. (2023), this app scored poorly in terms of

usability. Gioia et al. (2023) identified and

evaluated 11 mobile dietary apps that incorporated

a time stamp logging feature from the US app stores.

Most of these apps were not recommended to be

used in research and clinical settings due to

functionalities and data privacy. The only app that

was deemed good enough, Bitesnap, is not available

in Norway. Therefore, we hope that once

LogYourEatingHabits is fully developed, with both

all functionalities and ensuring data privacy, it can

be utilized for research and clinical use in Norway.

4.3 Limitations

First, the small sample size and use of convenience

sampling limited participant diversity, especially

among older adults, which may affect the

generalizability of the findings. Our intention was to

make the app beneficial to a vulnerable user group

among older adults, i.e., those who have health

issues due to eating habits and/or a lack of interest

in mobile dietary apps. However, this user group

was less available for participation. Automated

testing was helpful, but browser-specific limitations

underscore the need for more comprehensive expert

evaluations to identify accessibility challenges

overlooked by automated tools.

Another limitation was the incomplete

implementation of image recognition feature. While

it was an innovative part of LogYourEatingHabits,

it needed a large number of images to accurately

identify meals. The image recognition algorithm

that we had implemented was limited to identifying

only 60 meals that we had trained in a dataset. The

app was unable to accurately identify random or

untrained food items outside of this dataset.

Enhancing the image recognition algorithm and

expanding the image database would improve the

accuracy and ease of use of this feature in the future.

LogYourEatingHabits: A Dietary App Focusing on Eating Habits that Promotes Healthy Lifestyles

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Table 3: The system usability scale (SUS) results for all user testing.

P16

72.5

P15

77.5

P14

P13

P12

P11

P10

72.5

87.5

72.5

87.5

72.5

82.5

Participants

Iteration

I think that I would like to use this system

frequently.

I found this application to be unnecessarily

complex

I thought this application was easy to use

I think that I would need the help of a support

person to use this application

I found the various functions in this app were

well integrated

I thought there was too much inconsistency

I would imagine that most people would learn

to use this application very quickly

I found this application very cumbersome to

use

I felt very confident using this application

I needed to learn a lot of things before I could

get going with this application

SUS Score

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5 CONCLUSIONS

In this study, we designed and developed

LogYourEatingHabits to assist users in improving

their eating habits. When developing the app, we

placed a strong focus on ensuring that the app was

easy to use and accessible to as many user groups as

possible. However, some usability and accessibility

aspects might only be assessible through long-term

use. Thus, the future work shall focus on further

development of the app and addressing these

usability and accessibility issues.

Finally, the app should be capable of collecting

comprehensive data and performing analysis on

users' eating habits. The outcomes from this data

analysis, which includes meal, meal timing,

frequency, and portion size, can then be utilized to

provide more personalized feedback. Such analysis

would allow users to track patterns over time,

offering insights into how their eating behaviours

impact their health. When all these are in place,

LogYourEatingHabits can be used and evaluated in

a longer period of time with diverse user groups for

its engagement, user experience and clinical effects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our gratitude to all

participants for dedicating their time and effort to

this study, which contributed to the improvement of

LogYourEatingHabits. We would also like to thank

Associate Professor Asgeir Brevik, whose expertise

in public health nutrition provided invaluable

background and relevant contributions to this study

on logging eating habits.

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