Concept/features

Initial Purpose / Mission Statement

The app's initial purpose is to serve User:Mara and User:Alina as a personal tool and a replacement for existing calorie tracking apps. The goal is to make the app feature complete enough for that purpose and to improve on shortcomings in the app(s) that will be replaced. The app will be developed for Android.

General Application Concept

• screens should be consistent across the application
• certain views and contexts should be reused / deep linked when ever possible

- e.g. food search should be the same regardless of entry point (home screen, recipe entry, ...)

• design should be in line with current Android design guidelines
• design should follow function and be obvious to the user where ever possible
• labels should be descriptive and concise
• icons should be clear
• no unnecessary assumptions should be made about the user including their motives, their goal(s), their gender etc.
• interactions should be quick and to the point
• the user should have some clarity about their current place within the app (e.g. when digging into nested views)

Feature Brainstorm

Base Features

• personal data entry for daily energy expenditure calculation
  • age
  • weight
  • gender? there has to be a more inclusive way
  • multiplication factor for weight loss
• daily stats
  • kcal
  • important macros
• daily meals
  • breakfast
  • lunch
  • dinner
  • snacks
• API calls to online food database
• on-device food database
  • offline entries
  • caches of online food items
  • deduplication with online entries via unique IDs
• Search across both on-device and online food items
  • by name (fuzzy?)
  • by EAN
  • via barcode scan
• submit on-device food item to online database
• entry of new food items on-device
  • selection of unit type (e.g. "100g", "package (360g)", "serving (180g)", "1 piece (60g)", "1 scoop (45g)")
  • fractions or decimal
  • amount presets (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8)
• manual item entry
  • name
  • kcal
  • macros (optional)
• adding of food items from the databases to daily meals
• editing food items in meals (i.e. setting 2 pieces instead of 3 without re-adding the item)

Extended Features

• creation of recipes
  • name
  • ingredients (same entry methods as into daily meals)
  • parts of other meals as ingredients (specially flagged new food entry into on-device database)
  • one or more of

  - number of servings

  - final weight of the result

• adding of recipes to daily meals
  • in fractions of the entire recipe
  • in servings (fractions or decimal) if servings have been entered
  • in weight if final weight has been entered
• preview of calories
  • effect on overall calorie budget and daily calorie budget when entering items into daily meals
  • overall calories in a recipe while adding ingredients
• integration with Withings API for Alina's weight data

Advanced Features

• manual activity entry
  • name / type (with some presets)
  • kcal
• connection to Google Health data
  • get/set weight
  • get energy expenditure from activity
• automatic activity calories
  • option to account for energy expenditure from activity in kcal calculations
  • optional cap for max. accounted for energy expenditure from activity per day
• online features
  • connect with family members
  • grant family members blanket access to your recipes for use in their entries
  • share one-time-links to your recipes
• flexible daily meals
  • ability to edit daily meals per day (delete "breakfast" on sleep-in days, add "second breakfast" on Hobbit days)
  • ability to edit the daily meals template for each new day (reorder entries, permanently add "second breakfast")
• advanced recipe handling
  • recipe "duplicate and edit"

  - with factor (e.g. source recipe x2)

  - with ability to deselect certain entries in the source recipe before copy

  • convert daily meal to recipe

  - with factor (e.g. lunch x3)

  - with ability to deselect certain entries in the source daily meal before copy

• Android home screen widget
• easily visible of history of last entries of the same recipe on the add recipe to daily meal screen for easy sanity checking (which ever unit was used)
• sanity check when entering items with unusually large amounts of kcal (e.g. accidentally selected 200 packages instead of 200g)
• allergen and diet filter
• trend visualizations

Some-Day (e.g. for a public release)

• customizable home screen with options which values to show and in which order
• custom splits for macros
• additional nutrients past what we need ourselves
• configurable nutrient alerts for going over certain nutrients, e.g. sodium
• adherence to system light- and dark mode + toggle in options
• calendar based meal planning tool
• achievements and challenges
• proper online friend-system
• proper user onboarding
• data encryption for user data and privacy settings
• paid pro-features / freemium?
• integration with fitness apps
• cross-platform support
• web portal for use in a browser

A wild idea appeared

Flexible Mealtimes

Main Meals and Snacks between Meals