Inquiry 4

By following the design guideline of the Few Touch application (APPENDIX 9)

communication concepts of a food-information database module part needed to be refined so that requirements for the module would be clarified. More concretely, the refined

communication concepts should address how the food-information database module could be utilized so that a user could overcome the barriers against establishing healthy diet habit. The results in the previous sub-sections showed that the participants in Trial I might need such information regardless of specific timing or situations and they wanted “fact sheets” of food items. Considering these findings together with the archetypical activities that Kanstrup et al.

identified [49], making task scenarios of “calculating (or estimating)” were regarded useful to obtain requirements for the module.

For this purpose, I made an inquiry to the two research project leaders of Lifestyle project [1]

as domain experts. I asked them to suggest specific task scenarios for planning and calculating tasks as well as any user interaction design ideas for a food-information database module as an educational tool.

8.1.4.1 Suggestions 1

Suggestions 1 is by one of the two project leaders of Lifestyle project, Leader 1. Suggested task scenario can be summarized as “choosing foods to eat for: a lunch at a cafeteria and night snacks” in view of the amount of carbohydrates content.

This suggestion was based on the two perspectives about food habits: “normal habits” and

“habits in out-of-ordinary situations”. Normal habits mean daily food intake that one has more or less control over in terms of timing, ingredients, preparation, and amount. On the other hand, out-of-ordinary situations mean cases such as out-dining with others in which one has, if any, little or limited control.

Leader 1 meant that regarding normal habits, there are some things that a patient should just remember by learning once in order to improve their skills in diet. Examples included

memorizing rough categories of food items with regard to type and amount of carbohydrates, such as berries don’t contain much carbohydrates or one banana contains approximately same amount of carbohydrates that two apples contain. Habits in out-of-ordinary situations are more difficult than normal habits with regard to planning task and calculating task. Especially

“lunch at cafeteria”-situation is a perfect setting as a training because it offers a certain degree of flexibility to a patient, namely a patient can choose what to take although the number and types of options are limited.

102 Figure 8.4 Examples of food circles.[245]

Suggestions for concrete tasks for “lunch at cafeteria” scenario were the following:

 Estimate an amount of carbohydrate of a certain food item

 Choose food items (from a buffet) to compose a plate so that a meal can fulfill a certain condition

 In a set menu (a complete meal consisting of fixed food items), try to change amount or type of food items, which are under the category of grain, and see how much total amount of carbohydrate will change.

Leader 1 showed a strong interest in use of a “food circle” (“kostsirkelen” in Norwegian).

Examples of food circles are shown in Figure 8.4. A food circle “gives an indication of what the proportions of your daily food intake should consist of” [246

]. A brochure “Carbohydrates and insulin” (“Karbohydrater og insulin” in Norwegian) [245]

shows a food circle on the leftmost side of Figure 8.4. This food circle shows grouping of foods based on its impact on blood glucose level. Leader 1 suggested to take advantage of this as a part of interactive user interface of the food-information database module, so that it would make it easier to make a choice of what type of food items to eat. Leader 1 also

suggested an idea of user interaction design for food-information database module that fits the third task scenario above (Figure 8.5). By choosing one food item from a food circle and drag it into a “plate” area, it automatically calculates the total amount of carbohydrates and show it to a user. This idea was inspired by a “dish model” (“tallerkenmodellen” in Norwegian) [247].

Dish model shows how a patient with T2DM should compose a dish and it can be used as a portion control tool.

103

Figure 8.5 Illustration of the suggestion about an interactive user interaction design for a food-information database module.(The food circle on the left side is reproduced from [245])

Figure 8.6 Example of a "dish model"[247]

8.1.4.2 Suggestions 2

Task scenario by Leader 2 was comparison of food items by conditions relevant to ingredients or the amount of nutrients. Leader 2 also suggested two ideas of interactive user interfaces for the food-information database module, as shown in Figure 8.7.

104

Figure 8.7 Illustration of the suggestions about two interactive user interaction designs for food-information database module

The first idea is shown on the left-hand side of Figure 8.7. By moving a slider on a scale shown above, a user can find food items that satisfy the condition given by the indicator. The second idea is shown on the right-hand side of Figure 8.7. This user interaction design also employs the same idea of using a slider to adjust amount of certain ingredients. His example was chocolates, because in his experience of having T1DM, he had wondered whether or not amount of macro nutrients might be different depending on the amount of cacao. This type of user interface may provide a user with a rough idea regarding what types of chocolates they should choose.