Nutri +

Project Proposal
Guiting Ye, Hengjuan Qian, Luxi Chen, Ke Xu

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Project Proposal of Team Nutri+

1. Description of target audience

The target audience of Nutri+ is the people who care about their health and want to establish balanced diet habits but may lack the necessary knowledge of nutritional composition of food and nutritional requirements of themselves. The website could serve a large group of people including the aged who want to prevent diseases and the young who want to keep fit according to their own nutrition standards.

2. Outline of project goals

Along with the enhancement of living standard and the increase of the concern about the health, more and more people start embracing healthy diets. But the lack of knowledge about food nutrition and what the body requires makes maintaining a healthy diet difficult. The goal of our project is to build a platform to help users understand what they eat and then develop a healthy eating habit according to what they need. Users can grasp their requirements of nutrition and calculate the calories of the food they intend to eat in a whole day to schedule a healthy food plan. Our final product, the website, will provide users various ways to input their meal information including searching by foods name or image which is stored in websites database. Then a dynamic process of nutrient comparison will be provided in which users could get a better understanding of what they eat and whether they eat in a healthy way. If the food users add has passed the standard which is calculated according to the users weight, height and other personal information, the website will provide a warning and show some latent risk. Our project would also provide some social function, in which users can share the food plan with their friends.

3. Deliverables
--- The website, written by HTML/CSS/JavaScript and PHP with the support of MySQL database System. --- The files of the websites codes. --- The group interim report summarizing the progress of the project. --- The final report and presentation describing how the project was completed.

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Project Proposal of Team Nutri+

4. Ideal use case

5. Workflow

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Project Proposal of Team Nutri+

6. Timeline
Date Task 2.13 2.17 2.18 2.25 3.11 4.01 4.08 4.15 4.21 4.25 Draft of project proposal Finalize project proposal and make slides for project proposal Project proposal presentation Complete project design Complete project draft Complete project development Website test and fix due Group presentation Draft project report Finalize project report

7. Technology
Multiple kinds of technologies or tools will be involved in the whole process of the project, including project management technologies, system design and development technologies and team communication technologies. Project Management Excel/Google spreadsheet for making project plan and schedule control; OmniGraffle for designing workflow and ideal use case, describing the system structure and modules; System Design and Development Photoshop for image processing; HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Ajax for website front ends user interface development and design; MySQL database system for data management and database design, SQL database language for data extraction; PHP scripting language for dynamic web development; Team Communication Email for team collaboration and communication; Google Group for files organization and sharing; Google Calendar for team meeting arrangement;
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8. Anticipated Issues
Since the project is large and requires all the team members to coordinate with each other, we anticipate several factors that may become barriers for our project. Workflow All of the analysis of our project are based on the comparison between what users input and the health standard in our database. And inputting all of the food users eat takes a long time, which may irritate new users. Technology Since the function of the website is complex and most of our team members lack the related experience, how to apply what we have learnt to the project may be an issue for the project. Timeline Most of our team members take five courses this semester. Especially when it comes to midterm and final weeks, the workload of other courses will become more and more heavy. How to coordinate with the other courses will be a latent risk for the timeline. Marketing The anticipated marketing issues might involve the competition among similar nutrition calculation focused websites, such as recipe calculator and nutrition facts. Given that some of the users have already been locked in those competitors sites, it takes their time and efforts to familiarize themselves with the new website. Unless Nutri+ could discover some specific differentiators and offer more benefits to the users, the switching costs will be an unavoidable barrier. The maintenance of loyal customers may also become a potential problem because it can be hard for users to keep updating their daily menu once the motivations are weakened due to the achievement of short-term goals such as losing weight. Communication The possibilities of communication breakdowns within the project team cannot be neglected nor underestimated during the whole semester. The most crucial problem is that everybody in the team has an overwhelming time schedule. Given that this project is most likely to be time-consuming, once the face-to-face communication is not efficient and effective enough, the process of the project will be harmed a lot.

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9. Team Member Roles

Guiting Ye Project Manager Be responsible for managing the whole process of the project and making the project move smoothly. The responsibilities include: assigning works, coordinating with team members, scheduling the time and the content of each meeting, keeping the whole project on timeline, and contacting GSI and professor when the project meets some problem. Hengjuan Qian User Experience Designer and Marketing Administration Manager Be responsible for conducting user experience design and usability testing which includes: refining the main features and functions of the web application for the better match to the target market, revising the user interface design for the better user experience and discovering the potential marketing differentiators from both direct and indirect competitors. Luxi Chen User Interaction Designer Be responsible for user interface and interaction design, which includes: working on wireframe, prototype and interface and develop website with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, leading interface development meeting and controlling the result of interface development process. Ke Xu Database Developer Be responsible for website back ends database design and implementation using MySQL database system and SQL database language. Main tasks include making schedule and progress control for database development, searching and organizing relevant data or information the project required, determining data to be stored and the relationships between the different data elements, logical design of data structures used to store the data, coordination with frontend developer to keep the consistency of website, and the database implementation and test.

10. Reference
[1] USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Nutrient Database [2] Interactive Dietary Reference Intakes system of USDA National Agricultural Library [3] Robin Nixon. Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, Second Edition. OReilly Media. August 2012

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