Default Metrics and UX/UI fatigue

aaronkid

Please consider voting or commenting this post if you share this experience
Story: So here’s my scenario. I have a hard time imagining that anyone working on body composition and also preparing their own meals isn’t sharing this experience:

You grab a container of food, grab your food scale and pull it close on the counter. It’s a chore but one that you welcome because you’re at the place in your diet and fitness where you know you’ll benefit. Your scale probably defaults to grams, and only occasionally, when you can’t find the food item registered in grams, do you choose ounces.

You open the app. It freezes a moment but allows you to choose the meal, or you start from the widget, which, as I’ve recently discovered, saves me so many steps. Still it’s repetitive.
Pour.

Measure.

Scan.

Tap serving size, hoping the metric you need is available.

Switch to grams.

Tap the serving choices:

Your measurement doesn’t match the cookie-cutter serving size, so you reach your thumb for 1 gram, but because the form is poorly formatted, the 1 gram choice is just enough pixels off screen that you can’t tap it. So you scroll the menu up ten damn pixels or something just to hit “1 gram,” then enter your measurement as multiples of 1. Tap the check mark.

Repeat for the 5 + ingredients in your meal.

This can be a tedious process and the fact that there are improvements that could make this less tedious is aggravating. Small details that were overlooked or unaddressed resulting in systematized annoyances.

Fix: Change the positioning of the serving size menu so at least 4 selections are already on screen. Also is it even necessary to see anything but that menu while choosing? Most items seem to have just 3 options with 1 gram, the option for anyone doing the customized measurement route, at the bottom.

Alternative: Make 1 gram the top option in the menu by default. Or make this an option.

Alternative: allow a chosen metric to be set as default

This is the territory of UX/UI considerations that matter— how many taps does it take to get to a desired function, to repeat a common or repetitive task? Are there UI issues or bugs or sorting bottlenecks one will encounter along the way that make the process more tedious?


Side note: even this form has a similar functionality problem: inability to scroll.