Anchor: Wellness iPhone App Prototype

Eating disorders are devastating mental illnesses that affect millions of people in the United States. Even with a support system, recovering from an eating disorder requires a lot of accountability and motivation from the patients themselves.

Anchor Wellness a health tracking app made designed specifically for individuals battling eating disorders. The app allows users to track their emotional and physical health, presenting their health in a holistic view, giving new perspective to their health habits, providing encouragement and reassurance, and facilitating their recovery.

Set Personal Recovery Goals

To set up the app, choose a goal related to your specific type of eating disorder and the select what things are motivating you to recover. Anchor will store the motivations and remind you later when you need some extra encouragement.

Receive a Custom Plan

Enter your personal information one quick time to receive a customized plan tailored to your specific needs and goals. All information shared is kept safe and won’t be sent to anyone without permission.

View Your Health Log

See you health over time and begin to discover relationships between your eating habits, mood, energy, and overall well-being.

Track Your Energy Levels

Quickly record your energy level and different points throughout the day. You can receive reminders from Anchor or record on your own.

Track Your Daily Meals

Easily record your meals using food tags. Not need to count calories. Anchor does this for you, let you know whether you’ve eaten enough for each meal basic on your current dietary needs. Anchor may begin autofilling meals with tags if it notices patterns to save you time!

Process

Empathy for the user is extremely important when designing for people with mental illness. This, of course, is made difficult by the fact that each individual has a unique relationship with their illness and reacts to obstacles differently.

It was challenging to find a balance between what an individual battling an eating disorder would want from an assisting app and what the individual would truly need from an assisting app but not necessarily want.

I worked to create a supportive language throughout and to guide the user focus towards holistic health. While app was intended to be a strong guide, I tried to also leave room to accomodate for the users varying privacy needs, feelings towards recovery, and commitment levels.