Hungry Moms – iOS app for dealing with an allergic reaction

Hungry Moms is an iOS app for lactating moms. Their babies have allergic reactions for some food. And moms begin to avoid any kind of suspicious food in order not to harm the baby.

However they're usually overprotecting, and therefore feel stressed, nervous and even hungry.

The app's purpose is to help moms feel more confident and calm, allow themselves to eat more products and lower the stress level.

The idea of Hungry Moms app belongs to two friends of mine – Mikhail Gasanov and Jay Koes. I liked the idea and volunteered to help in order to do something good for humanity and practice design skills.

The app has a pretty simple mechanics – a user adds baby's symptoms to the app. Then she adds meals she had before symptoms have appeared and Hungry Moms calculates what food is safe and what can cause problems. The more data a user adds to the app – the more precise will be the result.

I came to the project when guys had MVP with a bit complicated navigation and not clear enough workflow.

App had two main screens – a list of products and a calendar with data a user entered. A user could swipe between them. Both of them contained "Add a symptom" and "Add a meal" buttons.

That caused navigation problems. After a user added a symptom or a meal she returned to the page where she pressed a button and in a half of cases she didn't see the result of her operation.

I wanted to simplify navigation, leave only one main page and save users from navigation issues at all. I wanted the app feel as simple as Facebook. When you use Facebook you never think "Hey, what section should I enter to find this stuff?". Facebook, hmm... Why not steal its idea? :)

So I left only one main page with a feed of symptoms and meals, put CTA buttons in the bottom and a block with TOP products list in the top.

I left only one way to reach pages: "Add a symptom", "Add a meal" and "List of products" in order to simplify navigation.

Team members liked the concept so I went to working on the visual design.

The first intention was to use pink, white and green colours in the app design. But we decided it would be too aggressive for the app that has to lower the stress level. UI should look warm, friendly and less intense.

So I used warm orange and green colour scheme, soft shadows, neutral icons and a photo of a happy confident woman on the main page. I also eliminated everything users could consider stressful.

The other pages are very clean and simple. I tried not to overload them with functionality and stick with interface elements people are used to.

Each page provides only one action. Pressing "Save" or "Cancel" a user always returns to the main page and sees the result of her actions there.

Test users showed a positive feedback – it was much easier for them to use the app, so we decided to go on with this interface solution.

One of the tasks was to explain to a new user how the app works and what she should do to get a result. So I left only one button on the first screen and wrote what is it for. A user should press the button and add a symptom to move next.

After a user adds the first symptom we offer her the second button and explain the need to add a meal.

Both screens contain hand-made illustrations that serve two purposes. The first is to focus user's attention on her baby's symptoms and a meal. The second is to make a user smile and relax.

Right now the app is in the beta-testing in the AppStore, we gather users' feedback and work on improvements.