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- Pro: The date of a new entry defaults to the current date.
- Pro: Templates allow users to save themselves time from entering commonly-eaten, routine meals or food items. Since Templates can be edited after they auto-fill the form, a Template can save the user time even when it doesn’t exactly match what the user ate.
- Pro: Once a user saves a Meal Log entry, the Quick Update box will clear again (albeit with a message confirming the previous entry was saved), ready to be used to enter another food entry.
- Con: The user cannot enter multiple meals all at once, before clicking SAVE.
- Con: Because food items in the Food List are not tagged with the different food groups, the user will have to label an item’s food group each time it is used.**
- This may be an acceptable inefficiency, since it gives users a chance to consciously review the types of food they have eaten each time they record a meal.
- There was an efficiency trade off made; it is easier to update the Food List because there is no need to tag items in it.
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- Con: The “Save meal as template” checkbox is by default un-checked, since the majority of any user’s meals will not be saved as a template (so, good for efficiency). However, there’s a risk that users will forget to check that box when they do want to.
- Pro: once a user saves an entire new entry, a message appears that allows users to directly view the previous entry, in order to correct any possible mistakes. This stays up until it is replaced by a newer entry’s message.**
- Con: user may not recognize that there’s an error with an entry, if he does not go to view the actual entry.
- Pro: To prevent confusion from two entries of “milk”, this interface forces users to write distinguishable entries if they have two kinds of the same item. Users will not be allowed to have two identical food items on their Food List.
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- Pro: It’s easy to figure out how the entries are organized--by month--and the selection for month is consistent with other electronic calendars, such as Google Calendar. The organization by weeks is clear too.
- Con: It’s less obvious how to edit the text of entries, and new users may not recognize that the changing of the mouse cursor indicates an affordance for editing the text once you click on it.**
- Pro: This design is, however, consistent with other applications, such as Google Tasks. It is also internally consistent with the editing of the Food List.
Visibility
- Pro & Con: Not all meal entries are shown at once in the selection box. However, the division of the entries into weeks can help users visually break down all the entries into manageable and more meaningful chunks.
- Pro & Con: The Food Groups for individual food items in a meal aren’t shown by default--the user has to click the little arrows to see them. However, this makes it easier to parse the rest of the information, since the screen is less cluttered.
- Pro: It’s possible to view two entries from very different time periods, side-by-side.
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- Pro: Before every “Delete Selected” operation to remove food items from meals, a pop-up box will ask for confirmation.**
- Con: This is less efficient, but these deletions are not recoverable. Plus, unlike accidentally deleting items from the Food List, it will be hard for the user to figure out what food he accidentally deleted in the Meal Log, since this is information from the past.
- Con: It will be confusing what “Select All” or “Deselect All” means in the entry selection box. Does it apply to only the month being displayed, or is it global? Perhaps there should be a “Deselect All on this Page” and a separate, global “Deselect All.”
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- Pro: The interface is easy to learn. It is a form.
- Con: An exception to the internal consistency of the labels in the dropdown boxes is “Food Groups.” New users may not know what it means.**
- Pro: However, this is intended to be one of the default graphs displayed, so new users can see what it is on their first visit.
- Con: New users may be confused by the date selection, since there are two ways of accomplishing the same thing.
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- Con: This interface is geared to experienced users, allowing for things like landing page selection and Templates to help efficiency. These features may make the interface seem more complex for new users.**
- Pro: However, since DailyDigest is intended to be used regularly--once a day to several times a day--new users will soon become experienced users, and efficiency becomes much more important to them. In fact, if the interface is not efficient, users will find making daily updates of their food intake to be too annoying or slow, and will stop using DailyDigest.
Visibility:
- Pro: The same top navigation bar (“Home”-->“Manage Account”) and footer bar (“About”-->“Contact”) are visible from every page of DailyDigest. The navigation bar is shaded to indicate which page the user is viewing, and there is a title on each page too.