Understanding Graduate Students’ Perspectives on Food Apps to Inform User-Centered Design: Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Survey Study

This study demonstrates that integrating quantitative and qualitative insights through the capability, opportunity, motivation-behavior (COM-B) framework provides a nuanced understanding of graduate students' dietary practices, food waste behaviors, and app feature preferences. The findings highlight the need for mobile food apps that are not only evidence based but also user centered, offering simple, time-efficient, and customizable tools that simultaneously address capability deficits, opportunity barriers, and motivation maintenance. Such apps have the potential to address barriers unique to graduate students, such as limited time, minimal cooking skills, and organizational challenges, while supporting healthier eating and reducing food waste.