Idea 3

My third idea is one where I had a bit more of a bulked out concept, so I thought since I wanted to do something about vegetarianism and veganism, I thought of maybe creating an app that provides healthy food options for people that want to try veggie options.  So there would be a landing page where you log in, as well as specify if you are vegan, vegetarian or just want to cut down on meat consumption. 

The app would include recipes, accidentally vegan foods, nutritional information for foods, and a community tab so that people can get to know people that have similar diets. 

Idea 2 Research

My second idea was to do something for the benefits of vegetarianism and veganism, and how it helps the environment, people and the animals. Similarly, to my first idea I haven’t fully bulked out this idea so I have just done some general research on the topic which will help me to create my initial ideas.

Helping people:

A vegan diet is richer in certain nutrients. Several studies have reported that vegan diets tend to provide more fiber, antioxidants and beneficial plant compounds. They also appear to be richer in potassium, magnesium, folate and vitamins A, C and E. However bad vegan diets provide insufficient amounts of essential fatty acids, vitamin B12, iron, calcium, iodine or Zinc. 

It can help you to lose excess weight. Many observational studies show that vegans tend to be thinner and have a lower body mass indexes (BMI) than non-vegans. A recent study comparing the weight loss effects of five different diets concluded that vegetarian and vegan diets were just as well-accepted as semi-vegetarian and standard western diets. Even when they weren’t following their diets perfectly, the vegetarian and vegan groups still lost slightly more weight than those on a standard western diet.

It appears to lower blood sugar levels and improve kidney function. Going vegan may also have benefits for type 2 diabetes and declining kidney function. Vegans tend to have lower blood sugar levels, higher insulin sensitivity and up to 50-78% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In one study, 43% of participants following a vegan diet were able to reduce their dosage of blood-sugar-lowering medication, compared to the 26% in the group that followed on ADA-recommended diet. 

A vegan diet may protect against certain cancers. According to the World Health Organization, about one-third of all cancers can be prevented by factors within your control, including diet. For instance, eating legumes regularly may reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by about 9-18%, and eating at least 7 potions of fresh fruit and vegetables per day may lower your risk of dying from cancer by up to 15%. Vegans generally eat considerably more legumes, fruit and vegetables than non-vegans. 

It is linked to a lower risk of heart disease. Eating fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes and fibre is linked to a lower risk of heart disease. All of these are generally eaten in large amounts in well-planned vegan diets. Observational studies comparing vegans to vegetarians and the general population report that vegans may benefit from up to a 75% lower risk of developing high blood pressure. 

Idea 1 research

My first idea is to do something about what the effects of consumption and production of meat has on the environment.

I haven’t fully bulked out an idea for what I would base an app or website off of for this idea yet, so I’ve decided to do research into the statistics on this.

Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It contributes to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degeneration and deforestation. Nowhere is this impact more apparent than climate change, livestock farming contributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. 

Climate change alone poses multiple risks to health and well-being through increased risk of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts and heatwaves, and has been described as the greatest threat to human health in the 21^st century.

Meat production is highly inefficient, this is particularly true when it comes to red meat. To produce one kilogram of beef requires 25 kilograms of grain, to feed the animal, and roughly 15,000 litters of water. Pork is a little less intensive and chicken less still. 

The scale of the problem can also be seen in land use: around 30% of the earth’s land surface is currently used for livestock farming. Since food, water and land are scarce in many parts of the world, this represents an inefficient use of resources. 

Feeding grain to livestock increases global demand and drives up grain prices, making it harder for the world’s poor to feed themselves. Grain could instead be used to feed people, and water to irrigate crops.

If all grain were fed to humans instead of animals, we could feed an extra 3.5 billion people. 

Industrial livestock faring falls well short of the minimal standard that since animals are sentient creatures, we should ensure these needs and interests are at least minimally met and that we do not cause them to suffer unnecessarily. Most meat, dairy and eggs are produced in ways that largely or completely ignore animal welfare, failing to provide sufficient space to move around, contact with other animals, and access to the outdoors. 

In short industrial farming causes animals to suffer without good justification.

At the production level, industrial livestock farming relies heavily on antibiotic use to accelerate weight gain and to control infection, in the US, 80% of all antibiotics are consumed by the livestock industry. 

This contributes to the growing public health problem of antibiotic resistance. Already 23,000 people are estimated to die every year in the US alone from resistant bacteria. As this figure continues to rise, it becomes hard to overstate the threat of this emerging crisis. 

High meat consumption, especially red and processed meat, is linked with poor health outcomes, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and various cancers. 

 

Currently the average meat intake for someone living in a high-income country is 200-250g a day, far higher than the 80-90g recommended by the United Nations. Switching to a more plant-based diet could save up to 8m lives a year worldwide by 2050 and lead to healthcare related savings and avoided climate change damages of up to $1.5 trillion. 

 

Contribution of farmed animal product (%)

-       Calories- 18

-       Proteins- 37

-       Land use- 83

-       Greenhouse gases- 58

-       Water pollution- 57

-       Air pollution- 56

-       Fresh water withdrawals- 33

Grazing and land used (m²year per 100g protein)

-       Lamb and mutton- 185

-       Beef- 164

-       Cheese- 41

-       Pork- 11

-       Poultry- 7.1

-       Eggs- 5.7

-       Farmed fish- 3.7

-       Ground nuts- 3.5

-       Peas- 3.4

-       Tofu- 2.2

Mood-boards/Mind-maps

Wireframes

A wireframe is a two-dimensional illustration of a page’s interface that specifically focuses on space allocation and prioritisation of content, functionalities available, and intended behaviours. For these reasons, wireframes typically do not include any styling, colour, or graphics. 

A website wireframe, also known as a page schematic or screen blueprint, is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. Wireframes are created for the purpose of arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose. 

Wireframing is a way to design a website or app at the structural level. A wireframe is commonly used to lay out content and functionality on a page which takes into account user needs and user journeys. Wireframes are used early in the development process to establish the basic structure of a page before visual design and content is added. 

Wireframes are much easier to adapt than a concept design which is why they are so integral to the design process. It is quicker and cheaper to review and amend the structure of the key pages in a wireframe format. It will also provide the client and the design team confidence that the page is catering to user needs whilst fulfilling the key business and project objectives. 

Backward engineering

Backwards engineering (reverse engineering) is the process of analysing an existing product’s constituent components to allow a fully replicated design to be created from the information extracted. 

You can reverse engineer by constructing models that describe the existing software and the presumed intent. This process has three main stages:

·       Implementation recovery. Quickly learn about the application and prepare an initial model.

·       Design recovery. Undo the mechanics of the database structure and resolve foreign key references.

·       Analysis recovery. Remove design artefacts and eliminate any errors in the model.

 Reverse Engineering Principles

Several broad principles govern the reverse engineering process.

·       Don't mistake hypotheses for conclusions. Reverse engineering yields hypotheses. You must thoroughly understand the application before reaching firm conclusions.

·       Expect multiple interpretations. There is no single answer as in forward engineering. Alternative interpretations of the database structure and data can yield different models. The more information that is available, the less judgments should vary among reverse engineers.

·       Don't be discouraged by approximate results. It is worth a modest amount of time to extract 80 percent of an existing database's meaning. You can use the typical forward engineering techniques (such as interviewing knowledgeable users) to obtain the remaining 20 percent. Many people find this lack of perfection uncomfortable because it is a paradigm shift from forward engineering.

·       Expect odd constructs. Database designers, even the experts, occasionally use uncommon constructs. In some cases, you won't be able to produce a complete, accurate model of the database because that model never existed.

·       Watch for a consistent style. Databases are typically designed using a consistent strategy, including consistent violations of good design practice. You should be able to deduce the underlying strategy.

Rapid prototyping

Rapid Prototyping is the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system, be it a website or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers.  

Rapid prototyping gives you the ability to explore and realise concepts more quickly. This efficiency in time and cost allows teams to move beyond the mere visualization of a product, making it easier to grasp the properties and design of a product.  

Rapid prototyping ranges from rough paper sketches to interactive simulations that look and function like the final product. The key to successful rapid prototyping is revising quickly based on feedback and using the appropriate prototype approach. Rapid prototyping helps teams experiment with multiple approaches and ideas, it facilitates discussion through visuals instead of words, it ensures that everyone shares a common understanding, and it reduces risk and avoids missed requirements, leading to a better design faster.

Think-aloud testing

Definition: In a thinking aloud test, you ask test participants to use the system while continuously thinking out loud — that is, simply verbalizing their thoughts as they move through the user interface.

The method has a host of advantages. Most important, it lets you discover what users really think about your design. In particular, you hear their misconceptions, which usually turn into actionable redesign recommendations: when users misinterpret design elements, you need to change them. Even better, you usually learn why users guess wrong about some parts of the UI and why they find others easy to use. 

The thinking aloud method also offers the benefits of being:

-       Cheap- No special equipment is needed; you simply sit next to a user and take notes as he or she talks. It takes about a day to collect data from a handful of users, which is all that’s needed for the most important insights. 

-       Robust- Most people are poor facilitators and don’t run the study exactly according to the proper methodology. But, unless you blatantly bias users by putting words in their mouths, you’ll still get reasonably good findings. 

-       Flexible- You can use this method at any stage in the development lifecycle, from early paper prototypes to fully implemented running systems. 

-       Convincing- Even the most arrogant designers usually listen when they get direct exposure to how customers think about their work. 

Downsides to think-aloud testing:

-       Unnatural situation- Most people don’t sit and talk to themselves all day, this makes it hard for the test participants to keep up with the required monologue. Usually though most users typically are quite willing to try their best. 

-       Filtered statements (vs. brain dump)- Users are supposed to say things as soon as they come to their mind rather than reflect on their experience and provide an edited commentary after the fact. However, most people will think about their answers first. 

-       Biasing user behaviour- Prompts and clarifying questions are usually necessary, but from an untrained facilitator, such as interruptions can very easily change user behaviour. In such cases, the resulting behaviour doesn’t represent real use, so you can’t base design decisions on the outcome. 

Hallway testing

Definition- Hallway usability testing is a technique and a principle in usability testing wherein random individuals are used to test software products and interfaces. This is in contrast to choosing individuals based on particular skills they may have.

The idea behind hallway usability testing began as an alternative to hiring trained or certified personnel to test a particular software or technology product. The idea is that you can go out and grab random individuals passing by an office in a hallway and get them to test a product being developed. Another way to think of it is that random individuals are gathered from the street and then assembled in the hallway before having them test a product under development. 

Some experts believe that using hallway usability testing can reveal up to 95% of usability problems with a given interface or product. In some ways, the principle of hallway usability testing is similar to the old idea of ‘putting 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters’ there is the commonly acknowledged suggestion that, by doing this, companies can effectively test systems without investing in a core group of certified testers or other users whose skillset or experience can be expensive. In a lot of ways, hallway usability testing is like developing a beta testing phase, where the product or interface s constrained to a random sample group before it is released to the public. 

Heuristic testing

Heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method for computer software that helps to identify usability problems in the user interface (UI) design. It specifically involves evaluators examining the interface and judging its compliance with recognized usability principles (the heuristics). 

Jakob Nielsen, a renowned web usability consultant and partner in the Nielsen Norman Group, and Rolf Molich, another prominent usability expert, established a list of 10 user interface design guidelines in the 1990s. Which are:

Visibility of system status- Users should always be informed of system operations with easy to understand and highly visible status displayed on screen within a reasonable amount of time. 

Match between system and the real world- Designers should endeavour to mirror the language and concepts of the users would find in the real world based on who their target users are. Presenting information in logical order and piggybacking on user’s expectations derived from their real-world experiences will reduce cognitive strain and make systems easier to use. 

User control and freedom- Offer users a digital space where backward steps are possible, including undoing and redoing previous actions.

Consistency and standards- Interface designers should ensure that both the graphic elements and terminology are maintained across similar platforms. For example, and icon that represents one category or concept should not represent a different concept when used on a different screen.

Error Prevention- Whenever possible, design systems so that potential errors are kept to a minimum. Users do not like being called upon to detect and remedy problems, which may on occasion be beyond their level of expertise. Eliminating or flagging actions that may result in errors are two possible means of achieving error prevention. 

Recognition rather than recall- Minimize cognitive load by maintaining task-relevant information within the display while users explore the interface.

Flexibility and efficiency of use- With increased use comes the demand for less interactions that allow faster navigation. This can be achieved by using abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands and macro facilities. Users should be able to customize or tailor the interface to suit their needs so that frequent actions can be achieved through more convenient methods.

Aesthetic and minimalistic design- Keep clutter to a minimum. All unnecessary information competes with the user’s limited attentional resources, which could inhibit user’s memory retrieval of relevant information. Therefore, the display must be reduced to only the necessary components for the current tasks, whilst providing clearly visible and unambiguous means of navigation to other content. 

Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors- Designers should assume users are unable to understand technical terminology, therefore, error messages should almost always be expressed in plain language to ensure nothing gets lost in translation. 

Help and documentation- Ideally, we want users to navigate the system without having to resort to documentation. However, depending on the type of solution, documentation may be necessary. When users require help, ensure it is easily located, specific to the task at hand and worded in a way that will guide them through the necessary steps towards a solution to the issue they are facing. 

Nowadays, designers are encouraged to establish their own design-specific heuristics to evaluate their products, systems, websites, etc. Since Nielsen and Molich developed these heuristics in the 1990s, technology has advanced, and they are less attuned to many of the products available in the market today. However, they are still largely applicable in spite of specific capabilities and constraints of modern designs. 

Steps to generate and conduct your own heuristic evaluation:

-       Establish an appropriate list of heuristics

-       Select your evaluators

-       Brief your evaluators

-       First evaluation phase

-       Second evaluation phase 

-       Record problems

-       Debriefing session