Dibbendo
B2B HealthTech Designer
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Introduction
B2C
Growth
Wellness
Strategy
Redesign
Reducing churn 23% by turning passive calorie
tracking into an engaging daily habit
Qalorie is a calorie-tracking app designed to help users build healthier eating habits through
daily food logging, calorie tracking, and progress visibility.
The business problem was clear: Users were downloading the app but leaving early. The team
was concerned about high churn, low engagement, and weak retention after the first few days of use.
Team
Solo Designer, Founder & Dev
Status
Shipped in Q1 2021
My role
Product Design & Strategy
My Contributions
Sole Product Designer embedded in a cross-functional team.
My role was not limited to visual design. I helped reframe the product direction from adding engagement gimmicks to reducing the core logging friction behind user drop-off, while aligning stakeholders around a clearer user and business problem.
🧠
Shifted team from “assumption” mindset to signal-driven UX strategy
🔥
Led the strategic direction, secured buy-in, reamped the visual design
Problem
User Problem
Users are not motivated enough & leaves before building a consistent tracking routine.
Business Problem
High early churn was hurting retention and future subscription potential.
Project Constraints
Designing Under Assumptions, Not Evidence
🕓
Research and Time Limitation
We had a 4-week timeline with no existing research. So I made a deliberate choice about where to invest my time first.
😶🌫️
Stakeholder Assumptions
Stakeholders were already leaning toward some solution. The product direction was driven more by assumptions than evidence.
Exploring Opportunity
Signal Mining: How I found insight without formal research
Since we didn’t have formal research, so So I used signal-based decision making and looked for repeated patterns across support tickets, Internal Stakeholders, Appstore tickets and analytics. Instead of asking, “Do we have complete data? I asked:
What signals do we already have that can reduce uncertainty?
Problem Reframed
The real issue was not the user's motivation what we assumed
We initially thought the problem was motivation, nudges and reminders but after getting the signals I pushed back on the initial assumption. I explained to the PM and stakeholders that reminders might increase short-term visits, but they would not fix the reason users were leaving. so I reframed to it:
How might we help users turn calorie tracking into an easy, rewarding daily
habit so they stay consistent beyond the first few days?
This reframing shifted the product direction from “bring users back with nudges” to “make the habit easier to continue.”
Design Decisions 01
Designing for Repeat Behavior
One major insight was that people often eat the same or similar meals across the week. But the existing experience treated every meal like a new task.
I redesigned the home page and navigation to make meal logging faster, with quick meal actions and a “last meal” shortcut for repeated entries. I also replaced multiple bottom navigation tabs with a central add button, making the primary action easier to reach from anywhere in the app.
We had opportunity to rebuild the UI style so I had refreshed with better look.
Why I designed
I added a Last Meal function so users could quickly log frequently eaten foods. Also streamlined the meal-based quick Entry.
Strategic Decision
Calorie tracking is is a repeated habit. If the product does not get easier with repetition, users are more likely to quit.
Design Decision 02
Making Progress Visible Earlier
Another friction point was that users could log food but still feel unsure if their effort was actually working.
The business wanted quick engagement features like reminders, streaks, and nudges, but I pushed back on treating engagement as only a notification problem. My decision was to prioritise progress clarity inside the core experience first.
Design Decision 03
Encouraging users with incentives
Users were logging food but still felt unsure if their effort was paying off.
Stakeholders wanted pushing nudges to keep users enegagement, but signal revealed the
users needed small wins to stay motivated before long-term health outcomes became visible.
We explored gamification, but I pushed back on making the app feel too playful or less credible. The tradeoff was motivation versus trust. So I convinced the team for lightweight reward system instead.
Impact & Takeways
Product Direction Shift
From “bring users back with nudges” to “make the habit easier to continue.”
Churn Reduced by 23%
From appstore anlytics we found - Churn reduced from 58% to 23% in the first month
Support Tickets Reduced
We’re watched support questions over the next two weeks to see if anything changes.
Stakeholder Alignment
The team aligned around habit-building instead of reminder-first engagement
What to next
01
Lightweight validation loops
We redesigned the app to reduce the frustration of users. So we'll be watching support questions over the next two months to see if anything changes.
02
Setup a dedicated analytics
I had suggested the team to setup a analytics to measure Time to log a meal, Repeat meal behavior and Daily dashboard engagement etc
Learnings
Research doesn’t always need to be formal
When you don’t have users, data, or a research team,the real challenge isn’t insight. It’s decision confidence. UX insight can come from small signals, not only usability labs, perfect sample sizes, or full research programs.
1 + 1 = 3: Be comfortable with ambiguity
This project taught me that unclear signals can still lead to strong product decisions. The business saw churn. Users felt inconsistency. Stakeholders wanted reminders. But when I connected the signals together, the opportunity became clearer: Qalorie did not just need to bring users back — it needed to make food tracking easier and more rewarding to repeat.