Know your food products through mobile app

Abstract

The numbers for obesity and other diseases related to an unhealthy diet are high and increasing globally. Information about nutrition values in plant-based food products is not accessible enough. This master thesis aims to investigate how a universally designed smartphone application where consumers can easily assess and compare the nutritional value in plant-based food products can change people’s behavior and mindset towards a healthier diet. It focuses on how individuals may use such an application for making healthier decisions and how it may create awareness of nutrition values in plant-based food products compared to meat products. To investigate how such an application would or would not impact people, User Centered Design was used to create a prototype application and investigate its effect. Thus, users were included throughout the process to design and evaluate a prototype application with high usability. User testing was applied to get feedback on how users would use the application and how it would affect them. The findings indicate that the prototype application have potential to create awareness and affect the users’ decisions in making a choice. They would use it for finding healthier options for food products. These results may suggest that such smartphone applications can help individuals towards a healthier diet.