About the project
Mealplot is the mobile application component of a larger program - EMPOWER, designed to help patients with weight loss. The focus is on having higher protein and fiber density in ones diet to aid in weight loss.
The application allows users to track their meals and their weight loss progress. It also allows users to set goals for themselves and track their progress towards those goals. Users can also view their progress in the form of graphs and charts. In addition, researchers and dieticians can view the data of their patients, adjust their diets, collect research data, and provide feedback to them.
My Contributions
Before my involvement, users were assigned role IDs on the systems, and the head researcher was responsible for informally assigning them to studies as participants or researchers, with no formal tracking system in place. I was assigned the task of developing Cohorts, a user management system that would centralize the tracking of researchers and participants in one unified platform. Leveraging the Flask server and PostgreSQL database in the back-end, adding new features became a seamless process.
In addition, we embarked on a year-long design overhaul project, focusing on completely revamping the UI to enhance the application's intuitiveness and user experience. The project already utilized Bootstrap for its styling, making a revamp much easier.
Another task entrusted to me was the creation of an on-platform messaging system. Implementing this feature provided numerous advantages, eliminating the need for parallel communication across separate platforms such as email.
Lastly, as a result of these changes, it became apparent that the previous management system had become outdated and required updating. There was also a change in the way permissions worked, migrating from an individual permission grant, to platform-wide grant. Thus, an upgrade to the administrative tools were necessary.