The Mealographer Journal

Now that Mealographer has had a few more users, we can start adding some cool new features that make use of all the data. The first is Food Suggestions. Wondering what you should have for dinner tonight? Do you have a can of peas and want to know what might go well with it? Try the suggest feature.

All suggestions are generated based on meals that other Mealographer users have entered, so don’t get too discouraged if a few of the foods you try don’t come up with much right now. As more and more people use the site, the recommendations will improve. Feel free to invite your friends and family to try out Mealographer, the more users, the more cool features we can add.

What do you think? Post any comments below.

If you’ve been to Mealographer in the past, you may have noticed some changes to the meal entry system. I’m learning AJAX and using it to make the meal entry system more interactive and repsonsive.

Now your favorites and usuals will show up in the list. Also, I’ve added a search box where you can add foods as you go.
One of my design goals is to make use of unobtrusive Javascript. I’m working feverishly toward that goal right now, and the form should work for fairly recent browsers that support Javascript. I have noticed at least one issue while using Safari, so I’ll get that working as soon as I can borrow my wife’s iBook. I’ll have the system working for those of you without Javascript soon.

As I get some time, I’ll post a few technical articles about issues I’ve run into. Please post below if you are running into any issues. Thanks!

First off, let me thank you for taking some time to look at Mealographer. A quick introduction: I am a grad student in Kent State University’s Information Architecture Knowledge Management program. I began the project that would evolve into Mealographer in fall, 2005. I was looking for a non-trivial project so I could put some of my IA and usability studies to use. I was able to get the basic functionality put together by the end of that semester but felt there was still more that could be done, inlcuding some formal usability testing. I’ll be posting more about my further work, future plans, and the test results as time goes on.

My goal with Mealographer is to make tracking your diet so easy, you’ll actually do it. I think that with enough information, you can take control of your diet. Since eating is a social activity, I will aim to give Mealographer a social networking aspect as well. I am also using a little AJAX, so Mealographer just might be a Web2.0 site, whatever that might mean.

This journal will document site features, new ideas, future plans, usability concepts and how they are applied, and even some techincal discussion about PHP, MySQL, AJAX, and the other tools I’m using.
Please use the site, and let me know what you think. Keep in mind that we currently have a staff of one, and the time I can devote to the site is limited, but I try to put in a little work each day.