Team Project - The Health Buffet

Our Project:

Click here to view 'The Health Buffet' Applet

Startup Instructions:

Tested and functional on IE7, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome using WindowsXP
No specific startup instructions. But in order to get correct behavior of the project the following instructions need to be followed
The video for our 'Help' tab which walks through the entire project is currently disabled. Help is currrently available only in text format
For 'Rate the Plate' same food item CAN be added more than once
'Rate the Plate' will behave correctly and display values in the table if and only if the food items are apple, pineapple, tomato or milk. One or all of these food items can be added
'Trivia' limits the number of questions to 1 instead of 4 for this assignment submission.
'Trivia' will behave correctly if and only if the first food item is an apple. The rest of the food items can be anything
For 'Trivia' same food item CANNOT be added more than once. Error messge is displayed when one is try to play trivia and not when same food item is added twice
The nutrition table does not have authentic values about the nutrition of the food items added.

Project Briefing:

Fast food on a regular basis at an early stage of life is a sure shot gateway to unhealthy eating practices. People are sometimes ignorant about the nutritional value and the calorie content in the food items that they consume. A fast lifestyle and lack of time to research about various food products is also a contributing factor.

‘The Health Buffet’ is a software product that aims at solving this problem. This product will be installed at the kiosk of the waiting room at the geriatrics clinic. While people are idling away their time waiting for the doctor, they can instead utilize it to educate themselves about the nutritional value of various food products that they consume. The goal of ‘The Health Buffet’ is to provide this information to the users in an entertaining manner so that it is easily retained by them. For this reason the software mimics the real world metaphors like plate etc.

Just like a buffet implies selection of food from a range of items on a table, ‘The Health Buffet’ also has a slider and a plate that is provided to the user. The user selects food items from the slider and adds it onto his plate. Once he has added food items on his plate he can check their nutritional value. Another feature that our software includes is a trivia. The trivia is like a mini quiz game wherein the users can test their existing knowledge about the food they consume. Just like the previous case they can add food items to their plate, and unlike the previous time they are asked questions pertaining to their selected food item and are expected to match the right food items with the questions. This game is a means for providing some fun and facts about various food products.

We shall also have a tutorial section that will walk users through the entire process of the working of the software. If new users feel uncomfortable using it then they can view the tutorial before beginning to use the product. We hope that ‘The Health Buffet’ truly educates and entertains people while they spend their time in the waiting room.

User Analysis:

Characteristics of User Population:

Age, gender, and ethnicity: We do not have any bounds for these characteristics on our user population. The system can be used by anybody.
Education: Knowledge of English (we can later implement the project in multiple languages) and basic navigation skills is required.
Physical abilities: Should not be vision impaired and should be able to use their fingers for touch and click functionality.
General computer experience: None
Skills (Reading): Required
Domain experience: None
Application experience: None
Work environment and other social context: N/A
Relationships and communication patterns: N/A

Stakeholders:

Primary stakeholders: People who actually use the system fall in this category. With respect to our application anybody who would be using ‘The Health Buffet’ while waiting at the clinic is a primary stakeholder.
E.g. Patients, Relatives assisting patients, Receptionist, Doctors, Nurses, anybody else in the waiting room.

Secondary stakeholders: People who do not directly use the system, but receive output form it and provide input to it belong to this category. We do not have any secondary stakeholders in our application.

Tertiary stakeholders: People who do not fall in either of the above two categories, but are directly affected by the success or failure of the system fall in this category.
E.g. Nutritionists/Doctors: If ‘The Health Buffet’ is a success then, patients will ask fewer questions about the nutritional value of the food that they are consuming to their nutritionist.

Facilitating stakeholders: People who are involved in the design, development and maintenance of the system belong to this category.
E.g. We, (i.e. Swetha and I) the students who are designing and developing this software and the people involved in deploying the software (professor and TA) will be the facilitating stakeholders.

Task Analysis and Scenarios:

We have our task and scenario analysis in both T2 and T3.

View T2 here
View T3 here