Exploring the Challenges of Using Food Journaling Apps: A Case-study with Young Adults

Abstract

Food journaling applications enable tracking food consumption, physical activities, and overall self-consciousness and Quality of Life (QoL). Although these apps can improve self-consciousness, there are several challenges that prevent widespread usage of these apps in the long term. In this paper, we investigate the major challenges faced by young adult users while using these apps. To identify these challenges, we performed two user studies. In the first study, we performed a large-scale online crowd-sourced survey involving more than 150 participants who use, or have used at least one food journaling app. This study highlighted the major challenges faced by the users of these apps. We performed a follow-up study to validate these findings in a more realistic setting. The second study involved 31 participants (in the age range of 22 to 27 years), who used the MyFitnessPal app continuously for 10 d to record their caloric input and output. We performed a thematic analysis on the qualitative data of the exit interview, which highlighted a few themes, corroborating with the major challenges faced by the users in UI, search options (for food), serving size, and reminders while using these apps. We reflect on these findings to discuss a set of plausible avenues to increase the long term and widespread usage of these applications.