Finn Mahrenholtz

Advisors

Rebecca Lennartz (M.Sc.),  Yannick Wiesner (viatolea), Prof. Dr. Björn Eskofier

Duration

03 / 2025 – 09/ 2025

Abstract

Worldwide, food intolerances such as lactose, fructose, and sorbitol, as well as gluten sensitivity, affect approximately 15 % to 20 % of the general population [1]. Despite their prevalence, the process of detecting and diagnosing these food intolerances is often time-consuming and costly, leading many individuals to self-manage through food trials rather than seeking professional help in care centers [2]. To help individuals track and manage these selftests, several food intolerance tracking applications have been developed. These food intolerance trackers support improving overall health, as they are a cheaper and more accessible option for many people. While some applications range from providing simplified overviews to offering in-depth analyses, many still have outdated user interfaces (UI) and lack in user experience (UX) [3]. The extent of deficiencies varies between applications, although many health apps share similar shortcomings in key areas such as navigation, ease of use, user feedback and error prevention [3]. For example, Golubović et al. [3] found functional deficits such as a weight loss app in which users could set a target goal higher than their current weight, and additionally users could not determine the timeframe to reach their goals. In other applications, visual defects occurred such as users not being able to enlarge onscreen objects or adjust color contrasting for accessibility [3].

Since these apps rely heavily on user inputs, UI/UX plays a key role in their success, and as research shows, UI/UX features can significantly increase user engagement and user satisfaction [4] [5]. Furthermore, a user-friendly UI/UX is not only beneficial for users, as 91.6 % of healthcare professionals (HCPs) consider user-friendliness to be the most important feature in an application [6]. HCPs play a central role for many mobile health (mHealth) applications, as they analyze the user data to make informed decisions and oversee the diagnostic procedures. With apps becoming increasingly popular for health tracking, the workload on these HCPs can be expected to increase [3]. HCPs could be supported in their decision-making by a well-designed UI, as it could reduce the time required to make decisions, and consequently also reduce costs, time and errors [6] [7]. In addition to user-friendliness, HCPs particularly value features such as that applications are free of charge, can keep track of nutrients and can be personalized, especially in regards of language and units [6]. Meanwhile, HCPs identify inaccurate detection of food composition, required technical

know-how and apps being unvalidated to be some possible barriers of using mHealth applications [6]. The findings of Vasiloglou et al. [6] for healthcare professionals overlap with the findings of Glubović et al. [3] for users, as both parties have similar demands for an application, with some leading wishes being that mHealth applications are easy to use, can be personalized and have accurate data. Hence, an UI/UX design adjusted for HCPs does not only benefit HCPs but could also satisfy the needs from users.

This highlights a gap in existing applications: the lack of user-friendly UI/UX tailored to the needs of healthcare professionals. Further research is needed to determine how UI/UX design can better support them in their decision-making while also improving usability.

This leads to the following research questions:

• What are the key UI/UX features of existing mobile food intolerance tracking applications?
• What are UI/UX features that can be integrated into the development of a food intolerance tracking application to enhance usability for healthcare professionals and users?
• What is the impact of the new UI/UX design on application usage among healthcare professionals and users in context of usability?

References

[1] F. Mandracchia, E. Llauradó, L. Tarro, R. M. Valls and R. Solà, “Mobile Phone Apps for Food Allergies or Intolerances in App Stores: Systematic Search and Quality Assessment Using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS),” JMIR MHEALTH AND UHEALTH, vol. 8, no. 9, 2020.

[2] D. Gargano, R. Appanna, A. Santonicola, F. De Bartolomeis, C. Stellato, A. Cianferoni, V. Casolaro and P. Iovino, “Food Allergy and Intolerance: A Narrative Review on Nutritional Concerns,” Nutrients, vol. 13, no. 5, p. 1638, 2021.

[3] G. Golubović, S. Dedijer, J. Kerac, N. M. Keresteš, G. Vladić, S. Petrović and N. Kašiković, “UI/UX design and usage effectiveness of mHealth applications: review paper,” Universal Access in the Information Society, 2025.

[4] S. Goyal, J. Sharma, K. Sharma and A. Kumar, “Impact of UI/UX on usage of mobile apps for remote psychological health monitoring,” 2023 14th International Conference on Computing Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT), pp. 1-4, 2023.

[5] J. M. Ferreira, S. T. Acuña, O. Dieste, S. Vegas, A. Santos, F. Rodríguez and N. Juristo, “Impact of usability mechanisms: An experiment on efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction,” Information and Software Technology, vol. 117, no. 106195, 2020.

[6] M. F. Vasiloglou, S. Christodoulidis, E. Reber, T. Stathopoulou, Y. Lu, Z. Stanga and S. Mougiakakou, “What Healthcare Professionals Think of “Nutrition & Diet” Apps: An International Survey,” Nutrients, vol. 12, no. 8, p. 2214, 2020.

[7] H. Alzahrani and R. Alnanih, “The Effect of User Experience on the Quality of User Interface Design in Healthcare,” Advances in Data Science, Cyber Security and IT Applications. ICC 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science., vol.1098, pp. 40-51, 2019.