NutritionATE: Your Personal Nutritionist & Goal Setter

Inspiration

The inspiration for NutritionATE came from both a personal standpoint and the linkage I found between that, and the global issue. As a student-athlete myself, I often face the struggles of being perplexed when it comes to my nutrition. Specifically, in terms of my diet, I am unsure about what times of day are best for me to eat (in coherence with my sports: colorguard, dance, and tennis,) as well as what types of foods would be most ideal and optimum for my performance. And building upon this–when I seek guidance to assist me with this confusion, I’m hit by the expensive advertisements for nutritionists who claim to revolutionize your health. The problem? Their advice adopts a generic, “one size fits all” mentality, which is impersonal and makes it hard to adopt habits that work for YOU. For example, you may be aiming to build muscle tone, while someone else aspires to lose weight. That’s okay! Different people, different lives, different goals. And acknowledging this, I realized that I mustn’t be the only one facing this issue.

I asked friends, family, and referenced global statistics. The outcome was quite upsetting. Several of the responses I got related to my feelings about nutrition, and how I often felt quite distant from it, simply because I felt unsupported by reliable information. But in addition, nearly 1 in 3 people GLOBALLY suffer from malnutrition! This isn’t always due to a lack of resources–it can be due to unhealthy relationships formed with food. There’s also the fact that obesity rates have tripled since 1975, showing that on both sides of it, there are imbalanced diets. On a different note, in the United States alone, 1 in 13 children have food allergies that restrict their eating habits. All different struggles, but all linked to the same, overarching issue. With this, I got to work (for Waffle Hacks 2024) creating NutritionATE, to foster healthier, and more holistic relationships with food. It gives you an experience that is truly customized to your unique self, something that existing websites and apps on the market rarely offer. I had an incredible time working on this project, read more below!

What it does

NutritionATE is a one-stop app that takes into account the features of several existing nutrition apps, but all-in-one. It’s helpful because it minimizes the annoyance of having to transfer and reuse data across platforms. Instead, our AI-powered app (and website) keeps in mind your past history, as well as growth and progress over time. That’s what makes us special–we’re adaptive to our users, who have ever-changing lifestyles. In addition, this AI is never here to judge, but rather, only to help.

What makes us unique?

• We tailor to pertinent (and niche) topics like food allergies, and eating disorders. Oftentimes, these make it hard to find “safe” (for consumption) foods. To combat this, my proposed allergy management feature scans items and allows you to input “your favorites” as well as keep a lookout for any “no-no” ingredients.
• Our platform is gamified! To keep user attention rapt, and sustain their usage of our platform over time, we incorporate things like scavenger hunts and streaks so that they feel like their efforts (to maximize their nutrition) are being used effectively.
• Dietary restrictions? No problem. We register that information, along with several other vitals about your health, at the time of signing up for an account. This is always EDITABLE, as conditions may fade or arise with time.
• Our community feature! Learning is more fun with buddies by your side, which is what I’ve incorporated with the hopes of empowering people to keep going.
• Progress tracker and a comprehensive dashboard, that allows you to visualize your growth.

How we built it

Since I’m entering into the UI/UX track, I built my user interface using WIX. It’s currently in prototype form, essentially like a demonstrative version of a wireframe sketch. I took great care to utilize visually appealing color schemes, manually added each component to the website, designed the logos and videos, and more. I truly enjoyed this process, and getting to see the full website come together.

Challenges we ran into

Given that I waas creating a user interface, I was essentially curating a low-code project. That meant it was all in the visuals. In the initial stages of project planning, I sought an idea that could satisfy three main visions I had: accessibility, visual appeal, and utility. I wanted my creation to satisfy these so that the user interface could be the best it could possibly be. However, while caught up in this, I realized I was missing out on a key factor: the user experience. To include that in my approach, I made my platform more INTERACTIVE. This meant adding buttons, different web pages, an open-source blog, a chatbot, and an opt-in mailing list.

In addition, given the 48-hour time limit of this hackathon, it was definitely a time crunch to both ideate and execute. However, I’m proud of the prototype I was able to produce by the end of it, as it represents the potential that NutritionATE could have if I continue to build upon it in the future.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m proud of the fact that this platform is versatile, tailors to a large population, and is also fun to use & look at. As a teenager myself, I know that I oftentimes look toward websites like this one (that keep my attention rapt) and thought from that perspective as I was developing the UI/UX. I think that definitely helped me connect to my audience even more with the final product.

What we learned

I learned a lot about what it means to design with an eye for graphics. I thought a lot about where to position certain small, and often overlooked elements. For example, small text at the corner of the screen, logos, image carousels, etc. However, this also taught me the importance of placement (in creating a more aesthetic bigger picture.) I also learned so much through the amazing workshops Waffle Hacks organized. There were options to hear about mobile development and web development at both beginner and intermediate-friendly levels, which came in useful for me as I was brainstorming and looking into the software I could try out.

What's next for NutritionATE

To potentially carry out this project further, I intend to publish my website (on a proper domain), promote it more via social media marketing, and release the app version of it on the app store.

Built With

• ui
• ux