Mobile application for making better food choices: an evaluation from persuasive design perspective

Abstract

An energy imbalance in food consumptions might cause a wide range of noncommunicable diseases. However, manually choosing appropriate foods for individuals would not be easy for many consumers. When smartphones have been more prevalent, developing a mobile application (app) as a tool to support them is essential. A typical app for this purpose is FoodSwitch. Although it has been deployed to support the consumers to choose healthy foods, the ability to attract users and the motivation to make the consumers change their thought and behavior to choose alternative food products are still low. Also, people are more likely to be non-adherent to the app in long-term use. While technologically theoretical underpinning approaches for designing the app have not been clarified, a lack of integrations of persuasiveness might be a cause. In order to verify this argument, this study has explored the extent of the persuasiveness integrated in FoodSwitch and to find a suitable approach to design new persuasive apps. Particularly, this paper has evaluated the persuasiveness of FoodSwitch against 28 criteria proposed in the persuasive systems design (PSD) framework. The evaluation shows that the app lacks many persuasive principles. Meanwhile, in the literature, FoodSwitch users have been looking for features that are corresponding with some persuasive principles proposed in the framework. Also, some persuasive features integrated in other health apps have shown effectiveness on improving user adherence. This paper recommends that PSD framework could be considered as an approach to design new persuasive apps in this healthcare area.