Screener and Baseline Study Outline – Team Rattlesnake

Target User Group

We want to focus on busy university students who want to improve their eating habits but currently struggle with irregular or unstructured meals. Many university students have demanding and unpredictable schedules (classes, studying, extracurriculars), which often leads to skipped meals, late eating, or reliance on convenience foods. This makes them a relevant group for studying goal-setting and behavior change around eating.

Screener Filters:

• Demographics 
  • College students (age: 18-26)
  • based in the US
• Context: busy days (classes, studying, extracurricular activities), disorganized schedules (waking up in the afternoon and only eating one meal per day)
• Behavior: inconsistent meal timing/skipping meals/nutrition challenges
• Time commitment: 5-8 mins a day
• Any disqualifying factors:  pre-existing health condition (will be hard to estimate what counts as healthy), or if they already have consistent eating habits
• the screener itself can be found at this link.

Diary Study Details

We want them to take photos of all their meals, and track the time they ate at for each of the meals. If they forget to take a picture, at the end of the day they should send us a little text saying what they ate and at approximately what time. As for content data we want them to write a short paragraph EOD about how they feel about when they ate and what they ate that day. So throughout the 5 days we should receive roughly 3*5 photos, 3*5 time stamps, and 5 paragraphs of data. We believe this amount of data collection is reasonable because it gives us a lot of data to work with, both logistical and content, and also only requires around 5-8 minutes of effort from the participant’s side. 

Data Collection Plan

• Collection: Submit pictures of all their meals and note of  time at which they ate their meals. Also submit a few words about how they feel about what they ate and when they ate that day. We will setup a slack bot to send reminders to send over the information on a daily basis (around 10PM) and we will collect the data using a google form which has text boxes and media upload entries. At the beginning of the study, we also optionally gather their age/gender/weight/height to calculate the amount of calories they need. 
• Review: Study the times at which they ate as well as any common patterns in their eating habits (e.g., always eating sweets at every meal, eating at very different hours across different days, etc.)

Study Materials

1) Introduction Document + Discussion Guide:

Subject: Welcome to Our 5-Day Eating Habits Study

Dear. 

Thank you for agreeing to participate in our diary study!

We are a group of four students taking a computer science course focused on behavior change. For this study, we’re exploring how busy university students experience and think about their eating habits.

What we’re asking you to do for the next 5 days:

1. Take a photo of everything you eat each day

2. Note the time you ate

3. Write a few words about how you felt about what you ate and when you ate it

If you forget to take a photo, no problem, just send us a short message at the end of the day describing what you ate and approximately when.

Each day should take about 5–8 minutes total. Your honest input is incredibly valuable, and there are no right or wrong answers.

We’ll send daily reminders and are happy to answer any questions along the way. We really appreciate your time and participation!

Best,

2) Intro Email: 

We are a group of four students taking a computer science course focused on behavior change. For this study, we’re exploring how busy university students experience and think about their eating habits. To start, we kindly ask you take 3 minutes to please fill out or screener form: 

If there’s a fit, we will reach out soon for next steps.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Best,

3) Closing Email: 

Dear ,

Thank you so much for completing our 5-day eating habits diary study!

We really appreciate the time and effort you put into documenting your meals and reflections. Your insights will help us better understand how busy student lifestyles impact eating behaviors and how we might design tools to support healthier, more realistic habits.

If you have any final thoughts or feedback about the study experience, we’d love to hear them.

Thanks again for your valuable contribution, we couldn’t have done this without you!

Best,