THE CALORIE COUNTER Introduction: Describing the interactive system:

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1 THE CALORIE COUNTER Introduction: I, Rohit Vairamohan have written this research paper on an app called the Calorie Counter for SI- 588 class. I stumbled upon this app when I used to go to the gym and was real serious about my diet. It was recommended to me by a friend of mine. I searched through the Google play and found it. It was a really cool app as far as counting calories and your intake each day. It was indeed a real treat to have this app help me chalk out my daily diet. Describing the interactive system: The Calorie Counter is an interactive app that tells you about the amount of calories you ought to consume in a day and it also keeps a track of the calories that you have consumed each day At first you enter vital details (height, weight, age, exercise routine etc.) and your diet goal. Based on this the system calculates your RDI (Recommended Daily Intake) of calories. Then you have a home/summary page for each day which has a section for food and exercise, you enter the food items you have consumed each day and the exercise routine that you have followed on that day and it calculates the net calories that have gone into your system. Moreover there is a search bar at the top of the page to search online for a food item like a hand- tossed 12 Dominos Pepperoni Pizza. It has a huge database of food items which help you feed in almost anything that you eat. It also has a barcode scanner through which you can scan readymade food items like chocolates, biscuits etc. It also has a menu page which has links like Restaurants & chains, popular brands, diet calendar, weight tracker etc which help you get the proper calorie value of things and also give an overview you daily calorie intake

2 Describing my experience: I became quite a calorie conscious person after I discovered this app. So I remember the first time when I used the app was when I went to Panda Express and I decided what to buy at the food chain using this app and also add this to my Food diary for that day. When I opened the app(figure 1) the first thing I noticed was the bright coloured recipes at the bottom towards the centre of the page(bottom up processing) and soon I realised that this was not what I was looking for. Then when I skimmed through the page, I saw that there was a + sign next to FOOD. I thought that I could add a food item using this. When I tapped on it I got into another page where there was specific categories for Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and again there were the + signs beside them, so I understood that I had to add a foot item into these categories. As soon as I tapped on the + sign beside the lunch tab a menu popped up with the following options: Search, Barcode Scan, Quick Pick, Most eaten, Recently Eaten and Saved Meals. So I searched for Panda Express and down dropped a menu, full of items served at the Panda Express. Yes it precisely did what I was expecting it to; hence I reacted positively to this event. I chose Kung Pao Chicken and I was expecting it to show only the amount of calories but it also had this View Full tab which could be clicked to see the full nutritional content of the food item I was having. Well I was further pleasantly surprised by this as I had never in the past come across an app that provided such comprehensive display of nutritional information of things served at a restaurant chain. Then I saw the same information for Mongolian Beef and I was surprised when I saw that the fat percent in the chicken entrée was more than the beef entrée. This reaction was more cognitive where in I compared the fat contents in the two dishes and changed my perception from the past which led me to believe that beef entrée were more fattening that chicken entrée. When I added the chicken entrée onto my daily summary for

3 that particular day, it showed me the percentage of my RDI that I had completed. There was also a graph beside it. The graph was a square divided further into smaller squares. The coloured squares gave me an idea as to how much of the days requirement have I completed as the remaining uncoloured ones were incomplete. Well when I got the nutritional value for the food item, I expected the app to give me information what my diet should include, the exact amount of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. But it did not show me any information of this kind and all I could see was the calories I took in and the carbohydrates, protein and fats I took in, which did not give me a complete picture of whether what I was having was healthy or not. This was a big disappointment and at the end when I got the final results in the form of percentage of calorie intake completed, my reaction was mixed as I had a certain level of negative reaction to this entire process as well. Introducing key concepts for analysis: The key concepts that I have chosen for my analysis are the Gestalt Principles, Colour perception, and also the concept of transfer. Gestalt Principles: Our visual system automatically imposes a structure on a visual input and they are perceived as a whole rather than broken lines, figures or meaningless set of shapes (Johnson, 2010). I will get into detail about the following Gestalt Principles: 1. Proximity: When certain objects are closer to each other than others we perceive them to belong to a certain group (Johnson, 2010 Ch. 2, pg 12). 2. Similarity: When a certain number of objects appear similar we tend to perceive them as one whole group of things rather than separate objects (Johnson, 2010 Ch. 2, pg 13). 3. Continuity: It is our inclination to perceive objects as a in a continuous manner rather than disconnected segments (Johnson, 2010 Ch. 2, pg 15). 4. Figure/Ground: Our visual system tends to perceive scenes as figure and ground. The primary object of our attention would be the foreground where as everything else is considered as background (Johnson, 2010 Ch. 2, pg 19). Colour Perception: The human brain perceives colour in different manners depending on how these colours are presented. Our ability to differentiate between colours also depends on the way it is presented. We can efficiently detect contrast but not absolute brightness. If the user is colour- blind he should be able to perceive the correct information. (Johnson, 2010 Ch 5). Concept of transfer is when the knowledge gained in a certain technology at sometime in the past transfers into your current action. Transfer usually takes place when a new version of particular software is designed. When the knowledge gained in the previous one is transferred into the newer one. Transfer can be either positive or negative depending on whether the pervious knowledge helps you or creates a hindrance.( Norman K. L Ch. 6, "Transfer of Training and Interference" (p )) Analyzing my experience: When I opened the app one of the things that struck me were the similarities between various menus like the food and exercise tab had the same font sizes and similar looks, also the + sign in both of them further enhanced my observation that both of them had similar function i.e. to add something.(gestalt: Similarity). Also on the first step all the pictures of the various recipes were closely knit together suggesting without looking into too much detail that they must be belonging to a certain group which is different from the others.(gestalt: Proximity)

4 Moreover in the first page they has used colour to perceive things in a very apt manner, like the bright green colour of the important clickable links versus the white backgrounds. The use of contrasting colours at the bottom menu bar (black and white) was really helpful to decipher the meanings of each menu easily (colour perception). Since they had used distinguished colours based on saturation and brightness as well as hue all the menus appeared distinct. This can be clearly depicted by this picture where in I have converted it into gray scale. Hence even a colour- blind person could have perceived the app easily. All the clickable links (the green ones) are of a certain contrast, the food and exercise seem similar and the RDI percent seems different. Hence as far colour perception goes I had no problem. Similar colour scheme was used on the rest of the pages as well. At first sight a person might say that the concept of transfer does not really get depicted in my experience but upon closer look it seems different. Consider the simple concept of the + sign. The fact that I had used computer applications/smart phone apps in the past really helps me to understand that it means that I can add stuff. Also transfer took place when I looked at the magnifying glass sign and deciphered that it was used to search things. This I knew as I had previously used the same kind of things on a browser window to search something. Again here the transfer of information is positive although if you consider the domain it occurs in far off platforms. In the third step, the add lunch menu seemed to be the foreground as it is brightly coloured and the rest of it since it was coloured in a dull and dark manner seemed to be in the background. Needless to say that my expectations made me believe that there was nothing important behind or beside the bright menu (Gestalt: Figure/ground). In the final step when I saw the RDI chart I didn t see them as two different set of boxes of green and grey colour but of the same set of boxes of which some were filled with green colour and others were yet to be filled. A sense of continuity grew from the lower boxes to the higher ones (Gestalt: Continuity). Generalizing my experience: If I were to generalise my experience I would say that people would relate to the app at a similar level that I did. They surely would be helped by the intelligent use of the Gestalt principles, to realte to things and concepts in the app in a better manner. Similarity and proximity would help them group objects and their functions together. Figure/Ground concept would help them focus on the figure and the subject of matter. Continuity would help them look at the RDI graph as whole rather than broken bits. Also since a person who would be using this smart phone app would be expected to have used a computer/smart phone before this the transfer of knowledge in a positive manner would help him to figure out what each tab or object does. And finally the intelligent use of colors would not only help a normal person decipher the page well but also a color blind person can manoeuvre himself through the page. Also like me majority of the population, when they see the complete nutritional facts, would expect the system to tell them how much of a nutrient is necessary? For example how much of proteins should they take in daily? When they see that the final result only shows them the amount of calories they have consumed and the amount of calories they have to consume and since their expectation is not met they might get frustrated. In other words I don t see most people having a problem with this system. It is people who are novices in the field of computers, smart phones and who have no idea about the common notions used in today s world that might have a problem. The only sects of the society who would have any discrepancy with the app are small children or people who are very old and never used a computer in their life.

5 Conclusion: Analysing my experience in this manner, I hope will help the reader of this article widen his understanding of how the various processes take place when a person perceives a certain thing using his senses. It also explains to the reader is to how the transfer of knowledge takes place from one technology to another. How things catch his/her attention and how he works on them or reacts to them. Also this article further explains as to what are the criteria to be considered when designing a certain product or in other words what are the things that will make the consumer perceive a certain product the way you want him/her to and why do we look at things the way we do and why we perceive things in the manner we do.