Simplifying Mobile Phone Food Diaries: Design and Evaluation of a Food Index-Based Nutrition Diary

We describe the design and evaluation of POND, a Pattern-Oriented Nutrition Diary. POND is a mobile-phone food diary designed using a theory-driven approach to address a common challenge users report when using food diaries on mobile phones: the amount of effort required to create food entries in relation to the perceived self-benefit of self-monitoring food intake. The design allows users to create food entries either via a traditional database lookup or a streamlined ‘+1’ approach. 24 people used POND to create predefined food entries. We found people preferred different approaches to creating entries, which reflected their self-reported nutrition concerns. This supports an argument for rethinking traditional approaches to designing food diaries. Keywords—mobile health and wellness; theory-driven design; nutrition; self-monitoring.