Inspiration
Millions of young people, especially kids and teens, suffer from eating disorders, often feeling overwhelmed by the recovery process. Traditional recovery tools, such as calorie tracking, can further entrench unhealthy behaviours, and are often not suited for younger age groups. Inspired by the need to promote healthy habits in a fun, supportive way, we designed an app that gamifies the recovery process, helping to destigmatize eating disorders and support positive change.
What it does
Our mobile app helps kids and teens recover from eating disorders by allowing them to collect badges for trying new foods and food groups. Our solution replaces the habit of meticulously tracking food intake commonly associated with eating disorders, and replaces it with a simplified alternative and rewards to encourage healthy behaviours.
Users are able to log different foods they've tried without the ability to view histories or log quantities and caloric values. Trying unfamiliar foods, different food groups, or foods within the user's personalized list of "fear foods" can earn progress towards badges, which unlock accessories for an animal friend companion cheering them along in their journey. The app focuses on building positive habits and reframes food as an opportunity for growth while destigmatizing recovery with fun rewards and kid-friendly UI.
How we built it
Using MongoDB, React Native, Figma, JavaScript, and Node.js, we created a smooth and interactive user experience. Our design focused on accessibility and simplicity to ensure a friendly environment. The Figma prototypes helped shape our UX to be playful and encouraging, while MongoDB efficiently handles the user data, allowing users to track their progress without overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge were technical issues between merge errors, lost code, and environment issues. It took us a long time to set up XCode and simulators to view our app. We ran into quite a few hiccups along the way between unfamilarity with developing for mobile, pushing and pulling before ensuring edits aligned between team members.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We successfully completed our project in the limited time-frame, without having to make any significant trade-offs from our MVP or between design and code. This was also some of our first time's using tools like React Native, and we were able to overcome roadblocks by collaborating as a team.
What we learned
Building this app taught us the importance of empathy in design. We learned how to balance functionality and care, ensuring that our app supports its users without becoming another source of stress. Technically, we honed our skills in full-stack development, mobile development, and version control.
What's next for Bites for Badges
We would implement more avatars and unlockables, along with use of AI to sort and tag food into categories to further improve our badge system and cover a greater range of cultural foods and cuisines. We would then like to conduct user tests, and work with dieticians and mental health professionals to eventually develop educational aspects to educate users about healthy habits and eating.
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