Calorie tracking app
I am currently in the process of creating a simple app (thinking of calling it Caloree) for iOS to track my daily calories and weight.
I got into this because this method of losing weight is the first one that worked for me after trying all different kinds of things and also, because I didn't find a lot of apps that would do what I wanted:
- A lot of the apps I found simply cost way too much. Paying 50 dollars a year for a calorie tracking app is too much. I will sell mine for below 5 dollars annually.
- Many apps require an account to be created. I value my privacy and think there shouldn't be a reason to track people's eating habits. The app won't track anyone.
- Simplicity: most app try to do everything which makes it hard to understand the apps. Caloree will have 2 main screens allowing to enter and view the calorie taken and see how much is left in order to lose (, maintain or gain) weight and the second view for tracking one's weight.
Does this sound like an idea that could work out? I know it seems it's a saturated market, but does anyone feel the same about the above points or is it a waste of time?
Looking forward to hearing your feedback!
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I pay $15/month for Carbon. This is more than just food tracking but I thinks the large market is good for you since you can improve on what others have done.
I think the main thing to improve is the UI/UX. I find most of the apps too slow to search and don’t give me the right overview of info as I’m inputting food. I think of you can reduce the amount of “clicks” to complete and action and prevent having to jump between screens you can have a great product. Because one of the biggest reasons I don’t track a certain meal is because it’s going to take too long to input and I just can’t be bothered. Speed is a feature - keep the app as fast as possible. I’d easily switch apps - if it was 2-3x faster than my current one.
I’d be happy to go into more depth and show you examples of what I mean.
All the best though!
Hi Drie,
thanks for the reply! This was exactly one of the biggest reasons I started working on Caloree. I'd for sure be interested in examples if you don't mind!
One of the major barriers for me is how hard / long it is to track food. I eat a big variety of stuff, so having 4-5 meals that I just re-use isn't practical. Especially when the user base is able to add whatever they want, so the numbers are mostly just wrong (Noom and MyFitnessPal are big contenders here) so you spend ages manually inputting / checking things. I know how helpful a baseline knowledge of your calories in vs out is, but I just don't have time to spend that long tracking every meal.
If you could find a way to better index foods and do some kind of regular scraping to cross-check them, as well as keeping the cost down per year, that would be SUPER useful.
Thanks Meri,
these are all good points and I have been thinking quite a bit on how to achieve this.
I am currently thinking of having my own index of foods for items that are well known, i.e. vegetables, eggs, etc and then for products relying on a database such as OpenFoodFacts. I am still working on how to automatically populate that index, right now this is by hand, but I will need an automated way going forward.
I am user of HealthifyMe app. It has ton of features.
I end up using 2 features most, weight loss chart & calories deficit planning with food intake tracking
how must calories i burnt is irreverent since i use Google fit to track my activity.
step counting, sleep tracking, yoga, recipes, tips etc etc are not that important since i know how weight loss works.
Simplicity: if app offers easier & fast UX where i spend minimal time in food tracking
for experienced people weight loss analytics will be more important than 100 other features
it is saturated market but i didn't come across apps which specifically target experienced people & there needs
Thanks Tushar,
it sounds very similar to what I am doing as I am basically in the same camp. I track my weight and my food/calorie in-take. I try to make it as quick and easy as possible to add food/calories - admittedly i might still find some optimizations here or there.
The app only has 2 main screens for the above mentioned. So it should be very snappy to do these things and for keeping the health data I use iOS' HealthKit which sounds very similar to Google fit.
It is good hearing that there are others out there that do this in a similar fashion. It boosts my confidence a bit.
Having such a big competition is harder to attract clients.
Thanks for the comment! For sure it will be difficult. I assume I need to make it very clear what the benefits I listed above already are and hope there is a market for people not willing to pay that much?
I don’t think their problem is related to the price. As everyone else mentioned in comments, here, they need solutions for their problem.
I have installed MyFitnessPal, but I used it few weeks only. So not exactly your early adopter.
Hey,
after seeing all the comments I agree. It definitely seems like there is a lot of demand on a broad spectrum. Which is good, I think there could be enough room to find a niche.
Thanks for replying! :)
Can you make a tool which can detect pizza calories? Like this website
https://pizzavitals.com/12-inch-pizza-calories/
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
Hi Will,
thanks for taking the time. This is not something I had in mind as I was shooting for a simple calorie counter. However, I think the idea is quite good to have "substitutes" for various foods
Maybe this is something for a version 2 or 3 depending whether or not this could be integrated into a simple UI.
Thanks :)