#3: Review of existing apps

After my previous post, I started looking for existing apps which supplied more or less the same functionality of what I wanted to do (counting calories, help people lose weight). I discovered 3 apps (DailyBurn, MyFitnessPal and LoseIt!) which I found quite interesting, so I started using them myself to see how they scored on the criteria I defined.

DailyBurn

DailyBurn is a mobile application, which supplies the functionality to track what you eat and what kind of sports you do. This way, it enables you to track how much calories you gain or lose each day.

What makes DailyBurn special, is that it also contains training plans. When you choose such a plan, DailyBurn gives you a very detailed description of which exercises you have to do and when. This makes it easier for people who don’t know a lot about fitness or how to lose weight in general. Unfortunately, if you want access to all training plans, you have to upgrade to the Pro version, which is, of course, not free.

Input in DailyBurn

Training plan in DailyBurn

Progress report in DailyBurn

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is also a mobile application, that supplies the same basic functionality as DailyBurn. It also supplies you with a lot of specific details of each meal: when you add a certain meal, the app gives you not only the calories you consumed, but also how much fat, cholesterol, proteins, … you gained by eating it.

Unlike Daily Burn, MyFitnessPal gives you the possibility of adding friends, which they strongly encourage, because they claim that losing weight together is easier than losing weight on your own.

Input in MyFitnessPal

Diary in MyFitnessPal

Progress report in MyFitnessPal

There is also a website where you can view and track all your data. The website gives a more detailed progress report (not only weight, but also calories, fat, proteins, …). After using the website, it seems like the app itself is a limited version of the website, that enables you to track everything, but for more details/data you have to log on to the website.

MyFitnessPal website

Lose It!

Lose It! is a website (mobile applications are also available) that lets you track what you eat and which activities you do each day. Based on this data, it calculates how many calories you have consumed and lost during the day.

Lose It! also lets you add friends, so you can track your progress together. According to them, adding friends is beneficial for losing weight. In their words ‘92% of users with 3 or more friends lose weight with Lose It!’.

It is also possible to add your own food or your own activities to the Lose It!-database if they’re not already included.

There is a form of gamification included in Lose It!: they supply a system of badges to motivate users to reach certain goals (drink enough water, log in each day, …).

Input in Lose It!

Progress report in Lose It!

Gamification in Lose It!

Criteria

How every apps fills in the defined criteria

	DailyBurn	MyFitnessPal	Lose It!
Track food	Yes	Yes	Yes
Track activities	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kind of activities	Only sports	Only sports	Mostly sports, but also others
Input method	User supplies data by hand	User supplies data by hand	User supplies data by hand
Define goals	Yes, required	Yes, required	Yes, required
Overview/diary	No	Yes	Yes
Progress reports	Yes	Yes	Yes
Usable offline	No	Yes	Yes
Login	Create own login	Create own login or via Facebook	Create own login
Sharing on social media	No	No	No
Add friends	No	Yes	Yes
Platform	iOS, Android + website	iOS, Android + website	iOS, Android + website
Price	Free, limited functionality	Free	Free, limited functionality

Conclusion

The three apps I reviewed so far all let the user enter all the data himself/herself and supply progress reports and diaries (except for DailyBurn).

Sharing your progress via social media isn’t available in any of the apps, but two of them supply the functionality of adding friends and achieving goals together. Also using your social media profile to login is not an option in most applications.

So having said all this, my next task will be reading a lot of research about this topic to decide which options are best for capturing data from the user and visualizing diaries and progress reports. Research on the social aspect of all this will also be very interesting, it will enable me to see if the ability to share your progress or to add friends has an impact on whether people achieve their goals or not.