User Interviews
After a short introduction about what we are doing in general (a project for a lecture in Designing Interactive Systems), we started with a few questions about allergies and other food-related irregularities (like are you a vegetarian). Caroline
Caroline has a lactose intolerance and diabetes. She likes to eat at restaurants and does so occasionally. Whenever she eats at a restaurant, Caroline has problems selecting the right dish. She has had bad experiences with asking the waiter whether milk is an ingredient of a certain dish, because sometimes the waiters provide incorrect information. At least at one occasion she got a salad with a dressing that contained cream, although she had asked the waiter beforehand. Since Caroline doesn't always trust the information she gets from the waiter, she is very careful about what she eats. If some dish looks suspicious to her, she will leave it on the plate or switch plates with her husband .Caroline usually helps herself by carefully choosing the restaurants she visits. She claims that italian and chinese restaurants are the ones she prefers, because she can find dishes there, that are prepared without milk, whereas german restaurants can be difficult, many sauces contain milk and she is fed up with always ordering Wiener Schnitzel with french fries.
Caroline would like to have a device, that tells her, which dishes she can eat. She would be willing to buy a dedicated device for this
and carry it with her, but it should not be bigger than a cellphone. Caroline thinks it wouldn't feel embarrassing to use such a device in a restaurant,
the alternative would be asking the waiter. After we asked her, whether she would prefer this functionality to be provided by a dedicated device
or a software that runs on her cellphone, she said she would prefer it, if she could use her handy, because she always carries it with her,
so if she decides to go out for lunch or dinner she has the device available. If it was a dedicated device, she would have to know that she
is going to eat at a restaurant, before she leaves the house. An additional remark she made, was that she would like to have all
the informations MANGER provides not only at restaurants, but at other places like buffets or hospitals as well.
Frederik
Frederik is 48 years old and actually he had almost no serious problem with eating until recently. But now he has a problem, when he eats meats or some fat food, then he has digest problems. So he went to his doctor and his doctor said to him that he should watch out what he eats and eat slowly because of his weak stomache.So he tries to eat foods that are easy to digest like fish no fried food and little meat. If it is possible, he would like to live on vegetables. He has not cooked himself, almost his wife cooks for him. Hence he doesn't know exactly in detail what he eats. At home he has no problem, because his wife watches and cooks what he eats. He takes lunch in cafeteria of his company or in restaurants in the near of his company. He finds hard to select the right dish. He can not figure out ingredient just with dish's name, therefore he has eaten what he didn't want to and had stomach problem several times. He decided to bring his own lunch.
After the introduction of our project Frederik is interested in the device and would like to be informed of it in detail. He finds good that MANGER shows the user not only ingredients but also calories. At least he can be well aware and watch out what he eats and how many calories he takes. He would not buy or carry an extra device for using MANGER, because his problems are not so serious. But if MANGER runs on his mobile phone, he will use it without hesitation. In addition he said that he doesn't want to cost such time to decide what he would eat or which dishes are suitable for him, therefore it should be fast.
Interview Findings
Our interviewees are interested in MANGER and want to use it, when it is available commercially. They has already had some problems or bad experiences in restaurants. The interviews what we had could be summarized as following:
- MANGER should be easy to use.
- If possible, MANGER runs on mobile phone or existing devices, not extra devices needed.
- It should not take much time to download food informations.