Designing a weight management application using a mobile device for Malaysian

Abstract

Based on Weight Management Information Center (WMIC) of Malaysia, about 26.5% of the Malaysian populations are overweight while 25% are underweight. Both overweight and underweight will increase the risk of illness. Weight management for people who have been overweight involves continued physical activity and monitoring of the amount of food eaten. Meanwhile, for underweight people, weight management involves maintaining sufficient intake of food to prevent losing the weight that has been gained. Therefore, a solution to overcome this problem, they should have a self-monitoring system on their weight management. Although there are a few applications on weight management in the market, the development and implementation are based on the western people. None of the application was design and develops based on Malaysian culture and lifestyle. In this paper, we propose requirements for developing a weight management application using mobile device for Malaysian. Due to the rising of mobile device usage in Malaysia, we assume it will be cost effective for Malaysian to use the application on their mobile device. The requirements we proposed should be considered while developing such of application to met Malaysian‘s need.