Mobile App Critique

Today, I will be reviewing the mobile app, My Fitness Pal. My Fitness Pal is a health app/food diary that allows you to track your weight and nutrition goals. In the app, you can log your daily meals, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. You can also log your water intake and exercise activity. The app keeps track of your daily input and helps you visualize your progress towards your health goals. 

Usability- My Fitness Pal is easy to use. The home screen shows a summary of your daily goals and progress as well as options to click and see your food diary and your customized plan. It is easy to navigate from the home screen to other items in the app. When you are logging your food items for each meal, you have to physically type in your entry in the free version. The app does give you the option to upgrade to a premium version that is a monthly subscription. With the premium version, there is an option to take photos of your meals to log them. 

Design- My Fitness Pal features a simple design. The words are in large print that are easy to read. The design is not complicated, which makes it easy to find what you need within the app. There is a list of meals for you to log each day and the app saves meals that you log often. The app lets you know how well you are doing with your health goals. 

Functionality- My Fitness Pal fits its purpose in that it allows you to keep track of you health goals all in one place. It gives you the options to log meals, track weight, keep track of macros, and more. That is exactly what the app is intended for. 

Recommendations- In order to improve the app, My Fitness Pal, I would allow users to view macros without having to turn the phone sideways. It would be great to be able to just swipe and see the macros for each meal or have the macros listed on the Home Screen of the app. I would also remove or limit the number of ads the user sees in the app. Granted, I use the free version of the app and there is a paid version that may not have ads. But, I feel that the free version has too many ads that take away from the space needed for the app’s functionality. I would also improve the Apple Health integration. My Fitness Pal has the option to sync your Apple Health app, which is supposed to show your daily steps and exercise. However, the app does not sync well with Apple Health. It shows the steps correctly, but I have to physically log my exercise in order to show how many calories I have burned. 
Overall, My Fitness Pal, serves its purpose. The design is simple and it’s easy to navigate. Although, it could use a few improvements, it gets the job done. My Fitness Pal is a great tool to keep track of your health goals and view your progress.







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