Assignment 1: Designing an application for Vegans

1. Application’s brief description:

This application is aimed to vegans that want to find and share new vegan recipes. They will also have the possibility of rating the recipes shared by people, write reviews and upload photos of their dishes.

2. Users

User group description: Vegans are a subgroup within vegetarians. They abstain from consuming any product from animal origin.

Group’s motivations and values: Vegans refuse to consume products of animal origin basically out of two main reasons: animal rights and environmental issues.

Subgroups among vegans:
There are three main subgroups among veganism, namely:

• Dietary veganism: also called strict vegetarians. These vegans have a total restriction for consuming any sort of animal product, even dairy products, eggs and honey.
• Ethical veganism: also called lifestyle vegans. These type of vegans extend the total restriction to consume animal products not only regarding their diet but also concerning other items such as clothes, cosmetics, etc.
• Environmental veganism: Similar to the previously named group but they put emphasis on the problematic of industrial exploitation of animals and the environmental damage due to excessive animal breeding.

Personas:
These are just a few examples of different personas one can find among vegan people.

Mary Miller - a dietary vegan. Mary is an actress from New York. She is 30 years old and she likes to cook. She tries to vary her meal a lot in order to get all the nutrition she needs.
Peter Griffin - an ethical vegan. He is a 47 years old philosopher from San Francisco. He likes reading and writing articles about environmental matters, Video productions and following the debates regarding the animal rights are some of his main activities.
Helena Svensson - an environmental vegan from Sweden. She is 25 and she is an activist that often goes and participates in many organized events, demonstrations and other activities aimed to protecting animals.  
Main characteristics of the potential users:

• The driving force for people wanting to use this app is the need for varied food in order to meet the required nutritional levels for a healthy life, abstaining from consuming any kind of animal products such as meat, eggs, honey, milk, cheese, etc.
• Gender is an irrelevant factor regarding the potential users for our app.
• The targeted age is 18+. Our application does not intend to teach little kids on how they should compensate their diet for the lack of meat and other animal products.
• The users should have some experience with smartphones or tablets.
• A minimal skill for cooking is required but by no means do users have to be expert cooks. Learning to cook is actually another appealing factor of this application.

3. The activity

The main activity to be supported by our service is related to the vegan cooking, which includes the possibility of choosing the right ingredients and sharing nutritious and tasty recipes in order to improve the life quality of vegans.

Factors:

• The users can use the application anytime they want to search for new vegan recipes as well as giving ideas and suggestions of diverse kind of vegan dishes. In other words, sharing is the key concept behind this application.

• The fact that this application is about sharing information with other people implies that it requires the device to be connected to the internet, either by wifi connection or cellular network such as 3G.
• The risk factor is basically depending on the cooking process, either by cooking something with wrong ingredients that could lead to some level of indigestion or eventual injuries caused during the cooking process such as hurting one’s finger while cutting some vegetables. Maybe a frequent warning reminding users about safe cooking could help to avoid eventual hazards.

4. The context

Since this application has a strong culinary character then it is only natural to think that the main environment in which it is going to be used is indoors, most likely in the kitchen. Indoor environment is protected from most external elements such as weather. The main concern being in the kitchen is the use of a computer device while manipulating food. We think that this kind of application would work best on a smartphone or a tablet due to the fact that they have touchscreen which is easier to clean than a physical keyboard.

5. Technology

5.1 Input: Touchscreen based interface is a good option for this kind of application. Cooking is a relatively messy activity and manipulating physical keyboards with dirty hands can lead to some sort of malfunction in the device, for example, some keys can get stuck due to rests of food falling in the keyboard. Touchscreens, on the other hand, offer a smooth flat surface free from any type of holes or moving parts which makes it more suitable for manipulation in a dirty environment. Even if the screen gets dirty with some food rests it is easily removed just by wiping it with a humid piece of soft cloth.  
5.2 Output: Since the idea is to create an application for mobiles and tablets so it should have a graphical interface and design that makes it easy to visualize in smaller screens. There is going to be a text section and a picture section. Furthermore an option for leaving comments and ratings on the recipes shared by the other users.
5.3 Communication: We think the best way to make a popular app is to go global and therefore the first version of this app will have english as main language. It should be advertised using some major public platforms where the vegan community gathers and interact with each other, such as the official international vegan website (http://vegansociety.com/), social networks, specialized forums and YouTube.
In relation to the connectivity and bandwidth requirements, since this application is basically focused on sharing ideas with other people, a permanent internet connection is vital but it does not require a particularly fast bandwidth.  
5.4 Content: Vegan recipes and the rating and reviews from other users are the main content in this application. Another important information content are the pictures that the users post of their own culinary creations. Sharing is the very main goal of this application. Having a daily diet that completely abstains from meat and other animal products is a constant challenge and therefore exchanging good tips of nutritious and tasty vegan meals is a great tool for making life easier for vegans around the world.