BiteWise

BiteWise is a web-based sub-platform developed within the existing Smart Eating ecosystem to address the specific needs of the canteen at the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (OST).
Smart Eating is an ongoing research and development project at OST that focuses on nutrition planning, AI-supported enrichment of food recipes, and serves as the technical and conceptual foundation for BiteWise.

At present, the OST canteen publishes its menu plans mainly as static PDF documents and receives only limited feedback from students, primarily via generic online forms.
This results in fragmented data and provides little actionable insight for systematic menu improvement.

The objective of this project is to design and implement a functional MVP that brings students and the OST canteen closer together by establishing a structured feedback loop between students and canteen and transforms the existing communication into an interactive, student-centered system.
The platform enables students to access current canteen menus digitally, receive personalized dietary recommendations based on individual preferences, and provide structured feedback on individual meals or on the canteen in general.
At the same time, menu ratings and qualitative feedback are made directly accessible to the canteen, supporting evaluation and informing future menu planning.

An OST-wide questionnaire was conducted during the requirements analysis, providing early insights into student expectations, priorities, and overall acceptance of the proposed solution.
An iterative UX process from prototype design to validation followed, and a summative usability and acceptance test with the OST students was conducted first on the prototype and later on the fully implemented application to validate the MVP.
The results indicate that BiteWise improves usability, transparency, and feedback quality compared to the existing PDF- and form-based approach, confirming its effectiveness as a functional MVP for the OST canteen and providing a solid foundation for future extensions.