Build Me Up
Build Me Up is a wellness app that helps users gain weight healthily through calorie challenges, personalized meals, and motivational rewards. It’s designed to make the journey engaging, supportive, and easy to stick with.
Problem
As a designer, I’ve always been passionate about solving real-world problems through design. With the rise of weight loss apps dominating the market, I noticed a significant gap for people seeking healthy ways to gain weight. So, how could I create an app that not only helped users track their weight gain goals but also provided a motivational, engaging, and holistic approach to ensure consistent progress?
Conclusion
Designing Build Me Up was more than just creating a functional app—it was about building a supportive and empowering experience for people often overlooked in the health tech space. Through user-centered design, careful attention to emotional needs, and iterative testing, I was able to craft a product that feels motivating, approachable, and personalized.
This project reinforced the importance of combining behavioral design, empathy, and aesthetics to solve real-world problems. It also taught me how powerful small, thoughtful features—like Freeze Days or streak rewards—can be in shaping user behavior and long-term engagement.
Build Me Up stands as a meaningful step toward inclusive health design, showing that wellness is not one-size-fits-all.
Solution
Build Me Up is a health-focused app designed to support users in achieving their weight gain goals through engaging, structured features. The app combines calorie intake challenges and personalized meal recipes to promote consistent progress. By completing goals and maintaining daily streaks, users unlock motivational rewards such as Freeze Days (which allow users to pause without losing streak progress) and exclusive coupons, making the journey fun, flexible, and rewarding.
Design Process
I followed the Five Planes of UX Design framework from The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett, layered with principles from habit-forming design (inspired by the Hooked Model). The process moved from abstract strategy to detailed surface design:
Strategy
Secondary Research
Ideation
Storyboarding
Scope
Kano Card
MoSCoW
Structure
User Flow
Skeleton
Mood Board
Style Guide
Low Fidelity
Surface
Hi-Fidelity Designs
Usability Testing
Secondary Research
1. Growing Demand for Weight Gain Support
According to a 2022 report by the CDC, approximately 1.6% of U.S. adults are underweight, indicating a clear need for supportive tools.
Online communities like Reddit’s r/gainit have grown to over 300,000 members, showing active interest in healthy weight gain guidance.
2. Lack of Tools Tailored for Healthy Weight Gain
A scan of the top 100 health apps showed that more than 80% focus on weight loss, with very few tailored to weight gain.
Only 5–7% of popular apps explicitly support users looking to gain weight, indicating a market gap.
3. Mental Health and Body Image
Studies, including one from the Journal of Eating Disorders (2021), show underweight individuals are at higher risk of anxiety and body image issues.
Healthy weight gain can lead to improved self-esteem, social confidence, and better overall mental health.
Ideation
The "Accelerators in Health Care" game from Penn Medicine uses a card-based approach to foster creative ideation for healthcare challenges. Each card represents an insight or potential solution, allowing me to explore various avenues and generate innovative ideas. This process broadened my perspective for Build Me Up, inspiring creative features like personalized challenges and user-centered solutions to enhance engagement and support healthy weight gain.
Storyboard
To design a user-friendly and engaging experience for Build Me Up, I visualized the user journey through a storyboard, applying the Trigger–Action–Reward–Investment framework. Notifications serve as the trigger, prompting users to open the app. The daily challenge acts as the action, encouraging users to participate actively. Completing challenges and maintaining a streak provides the reward, reinforcing a sense of progress. As users save recipes and unlock coupons, they invest more into the app, increasing their likelihood of returning and building a lasting habit around healthy weight gain.
View Storyboard
Feature Prioritization with the Kano Card
To ensure Build Me Up delivered meaningful value to users, I used the Kano Model to categorize features based on how they impact user satisfaction. I identified core functionalities like calories challenges and goal setting as basic needs, which users expect by default. Features such as streak tracking and personalized recipes suggestions were classified as performance features that directly increase satisfaction. Surprise elements like rewards served as delighters. This approach helped me strike a balance between utility and delight in the product experience.
View Kano Card
Organizing Development with MoSCoW Prioritization
To translate ideas into an actionable roadmap, I applied the MoSCoW method to prioritize features based on necessity and feasibility. I labeled critical elements like sign-up, daily challenges, and notification systems as Must-haves. Should-haves included features like provide recipes, freeze reward. Could-haves were things like social media integrations scan barcode and nutrition label, and Won’t-haves were ideas I intentionally deprioritized for future phases. This clear structure helped me manage scope and stay focused on what mattered most for the MVP.
View MoSCoW
User Flow
I created a detailed user flow. This helped me organize the app’s core features, ensuring a seamless experience as users move through their weight gain journey. The flow covered everything from account setup to accessing daily challenges, maintain streak and provide recipes tailored to gain weight.
View User Flow
Mood Board and Study Guide
To set the visual tone for Build Me Up, I created a mood board centered around simple, heath, modern, consistency and motivation. The imagery was vibrant, using natural and earthy tones to evoke feelings of health, comfort, and energy. This laid the foundation for a style guide that ensured consistency and clarity across the app. I selected a warm, inviting color palette and paired it with clean, legible typography to support accessibility. Together, these elements created a cohesive, user-friendly aesthetic aligned with the app’s supportive and motivational purpose.
Low Fidelity
With the mood board and style guide in place, I moved on to creating low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the basic layout and functionality of the app. The low-fi prototype helped me quickly test and iterate on ideas without worrying about details. It allowed me to focus on the core interactions and flows, such as setting up user profiles and displaying daily challenges.
High Fidelity
With the mood board and style guide in place, I moved on to creating low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the basic layout and functionality of the app. The low-fi prototype helped me quickly test and iterate on ideas without worrying about details. It allowed me to focus on the core interactions and flows, such as setting up user profiles and displaying daily challenges.
View Prototype