User Scenarios

Lindsey Adams

age: 20

occupation: Student

hobbies: Singing, leading worship songs for her sorority, acting, anything theatrical really, and hanging out with friends.

Lindsey is a college student at MACU. She is a music major and has a fun and caring personality. She loves hanging out with her friends, but when they go out to eat she begins to feel anxious. She is lactose intolerant (allergic to milk), so any product that has milk in it will give her an allergic reaction. Because of this she doesn’t always know where she can eat. Friend time turns into an inner struggle between going and not eating or hopefully finding a dish she can partake of. Her dietitian told her about a new app for smart phones that locates stores, locations, markets that are aware of the special needs of certain people–those with food allergies such as gluten and lactose intolerances as well as let’s you know what’s in certain foods like red dye #5. Lindsey finds some hope that she will be able to locate places that will cater to her needs. Now she doesn’t feel as so anxious when she goes out to eat or grocery shopping. She can look ahead and see which restaurants everyone likes but also caters to her dietary restrictions.

Daniel Best

age: 34

occupation: Radio host for MACU’s radio channel

hobbies: Traveling, birding, singing Opera, and watching American Idol.

Daniel is happily married with 3 children. Life would be wonderful, he thinks, if it weren’t for his struggle with his weight and diabetes. Every meal is a battle. He tries to eat better and desires that his kids eat healthy meals as well to prevent the onset of juvenile diabetes. His wife and he have done research on the matter and have learned a lot about what foods are right or now for them. They live a pretty fast paced lifestyle like most in the States, so sometimes meals don’t get packed or time doesn’t allow for cooking some evenings. His daughter Julia tells him she found an app he can download to his iPhone that may help them for these situations. He downloads the app and checks out the capabilities. It can tell him what healthy places are near him, such as farmers’ markets and organic health food stores. It also has a database of ingredients like maltodextrin, dextrose, sucrose, sorbitol and xylitol, which are all forms of sugars or sugar substitutes. He sees that a lot of the foods that say sugar free, have sugar additives like Splenda, which includes maltodextrin and dextrose as its first ingredients. An affect these can have is amplifying cravings for junk foods and creating a lazy digestive system. Not what he needs at all. He can also find out what produce is in season so when he buys new veggies and fruits for the kids, he can even get little Michael to eat these healthy foods.