One year and two days ago, Salman Rajput ’14, Carly Carlin ’15 and software engineer Annie Tuan founded the fitness app Simple Steps. Recently named the “Best Health App of 2015” by Men’s Fitness, Rajput said that thousands of people are now using it to track their health.
The app is focused on healthy eating by having people make small isolated changes to their life, which later become habits, Rajput said. The app makes dietary recommendations based on the user’s unique lifestyle. Users select their goal, whether it be weight loss, disease prevention, feeling better or generally increasing better health. Users then take a short quiz about their lifestyle, and the app offers suggestions on how to reach their goal.
The changes are basic and do not require a complete diet overhaul, Rajput said. For example, users can choose to focus on drinking more water each day to stay hydrated. Users concentrate on the small habit for a period of time until they make enough progress to unlock another goal, he said.
“You only work on one thing at a time and you never bite off more than you can chew,” Rajput said.
The ultimate objective is for people to build healthy habits that actually stick, Rajput added. The app also features a social component where users can add friends to keep each other motivated.
Rajput said the app was started in order to help Americans combat many of the diseases related to poor eating as well as help the environment. The app aims to encourage Americans to follow a more sustainable diet, he said. The recommendations are mostly based on Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate, a dietary guideline.
“Eating healthy is the single most impactful action to affect our health but also to tackle the public health challenges that are plaguing our nation,” he said.
Following a healthier diet is also more sustainable for the environment, as the production of unhealthy foods requires more resources and emits more greenhouse gases, he said.
Rajput cites his passion for healthy eating as an important part of why he was interested in these issues. He said most health-related apps currently on the market advise users to make large-scale changes, such as going on a diet or counting calories.
“These are really big changes that are hard for people to stick with,” he said. “People find them too challenging and stop doing them and then just revert back to their old ways. Science tells us that these are really ineffective methods.”
Dan Korff-Korn ’19 said that even though he currently does not use a health app, he would be interested in having one that focuses on healthy heart rates.
Catherine Rocchi ’19 said that she used to use a health app aimed at runners but would be interested in using Simple Steps.
Rajput was Carlin’s undergraduate advisor when she was a first-year, he said. Carlin currently works at the Boston University School of Public Health. She focuses on user development and media relations for Simple Steps. Carlin aims to become a doctor, Rajput said.
Rajput met Tuan in Boston, he said. She joined the team after trying a clean eating challenge and works on the Android and backend development of the app, according to the Simple Steps website. The social objective of the business is really important to Tuan, Rajput added.
He said that Dartmouth gave the team many opportunities and resources to help build the app.
“My biology major, my undergraduate research and some engineering classes taught me how to build a product and creating the process behind building something and innovating,” he said.
Rajput said studying biology gave him the tools to understand the science around health. He said that in order to distill the large amount of information available, they look at the science to understand what kinds of smart choices people should be making.
“I actually did research while I was at Dartmouth to help people figure out how to eat healthy and the misconceptions around eating,” he said.
Rajput said his undergraduate research on nutrition and behavior change was in part where the idea of Simple Steps was born. He worked on several startups throughout his time at Dartmouth before working on Simple Steps. He added that the engineering course “Design Thinking,” which he took in the fall of 2012,taught him about the robotics of innovating.
Engineering professor Peter Robbie, who taught Rajput in the “Design Thinking” course, said Rajput focused on behavioral changes while he was an undergraduate.
“It’s wonderful to hear that he’s moving forward with his project,” Robbie said. “It’s very fun to hear when students do that.”
Rajput noted that his involvement with the entrepreneurship community at Dartmouth was an important factor in building Simple Steps and helped him understand to a greater extent how startups work. He said he wants his app to help people both at the individual level and on a larger scale.“We’re really motivated to make a social impact,” Rajput said.
Correction appended (Feb. 2, 2016):
The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Carlin is a student at the Boston University School of Public Health. Carlin, in fact, works at the university. She focuses on user development and media relations for her work on the app, not her work at the university.
