Design and Evaluation of the Nutrition Recommender Application for 1-5 Year Old Children based on Android

Nutrition recommender systems are one of the most prominent technologies in the field of nutrition informatics that help users to have a healthy diet. These systems are able to suggest the most appropriate foods and meal plans considering the child's physical condition. Considering that children are the most vulnerable age group, one of the most important health goals in the early years of a child's life is achieving balanced and correct nutrition, and as a result this study was conducted with the aim of designing, creating and evaluating a children's nutrition recommendation system.

This research was conducted in 2022 in three stages to assess the needs of the informational elements of the nutrition recommender application. First, in order to determine data capabilities of the program, data needs analysis has been done. In the following, based on the needs assessment, the application was designed and its final version was created. The application was created in the Android Studio environment and then its technical applicability was done using the Nielsen questionnaire by 5 medical informatics and health information management experts.

The required information capabilities of the program were determined and after the statistical analysis of the questionnaire, most of the items raised in it were deemed necessary by the experts participating in the research with a high percentage (90%) and were included in the application program. Then the design and creation of the nutrition recommender application for children 1 to 5 years old was done in the Android Studio programming environment. Finally, the use of Nielsen's exploratory evaluation questionnaire and its technical applicability were evaluated by experts. The average severity of the problems related to Nielsen's ten principles was 1.3, which is classified as minor problems.

Using the nutrition recommender application will be a useful solution to increase parents' awareness of the child's growth status in terms of age, height and head circumference. This program has improved nutritional health, improved mental health, and better growth of children and will play a significant role in preventing the occurrence of diseases by using appropriate nutritional recommendations.