Week 4 assignment

After we met last week, our goal for this week was to really dive into what we want this app to look like. How will we make it user friendly? Who will be using it and how will we help them to meet their health goals, etc.

My specific focus point was user experience while Chelsea is focusing on content validation. For user experience we want to keep in mind the preferences of diverse user groups, overall user goals and activities, and also user motivation including beliefs and practices. With all of that said, I set out to answer a few questions about our dream app....

1) Who is our audience?
-Our audience is mainly children from 8-14 years old as well as their families, all at risk for type 2 diabetes. Our goal is to help them make healthy food choices while out to eat at restaurants, food stands or convenience stores. These types of stores all have pre-made foods that are unable to have a nutrition label scanned in order to help their decision.

2) How will we reach them?
-We will obviously be communicating with these families solely through this app. Hopefully our ideal family will have some sort of ipad, iphone, ipod or droid phone that is able to download these apps. With all the technology out there and deals on these products, assuming they have at least one of these items is not too far-fetched. This app will be able to be downloaded for free as well, so it will not cost the families anything extra to have this feature on their phone or tablet.

3) What will motivate them to use this app?
-As stated before the free download is a key factor to obtaining this helpful app. Another key factor is easy usability and not too wordy or have too many steps once inside of the app. If the vocabulary gets too wordy or in depth, people will stop reading once they don't understand what's going on. A simple process in order to rate these foods is what we're aiming for. Maybe there could be some sort of database on this phone that includes various popular restaurants and convenience stores that users could rate the foods at each place and build a type of discussion forum. In order to do this, location services might be necessary to find each store. Once they find the location they're at there should be some sort of rating system that allows the user to see if other people found healthy food that allowed them to stick to their diets or not wander too far off of them. This is also where people could post about what NOT to get at each place as well.

During our next meeting we will discuss what Chelsea and I have come up with for these questions and then hopefully put together a plan to present to the computer science side of this research so they can start building the app for us.