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Designing User Experience. Fitness 360
Designing User Experience
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Designing User Experience: Fitness 360
Fitness 360 is a new Smartphone application that enables users to gain fitness and control their body sizes, shapes and weight. Human bodies are made of different components, and all the components need to balance for a person to become healthier. The application developed for fitness was entitled to incorporate all the aspects of the field, developers and the stakeholders. An application was made for the people in between the age of 20 and 60 years. These users can read and write and follow instructions clearly as they are articulated. According to the statistics, the majority of people living in the world range between 20 and 60 years. These people comprise of the majority number that dies everyday through lifestyle diseases. Every person in the world needs to remain fit so as to resist some dangerous diseases. Technological advancements have a chance to serve people because of the high number of patients while doctors are few. The mobile application presented in this paper is one of the best ways to ensure that health matters are handled with care both in the house and the office.
There are very many advantages of involving users and stakeholders in creating an application. The users give their views on the application they need and how they need an application to appear. The application must be user friendly, such that when a user opens it guides him/her on how to operate it. The stakeholders comprise of the people who provide resources during the creation of the application. The resources include money, information, infrastructure, application development, and equipment developers. All these people have an impact on the production of an application. When creating the medical application the developers take most of the time getting information from the medical personnel to know how to give prescriptions. The application created should be good enough to solve medical problems associated with overweight (Steward 2013:14).
The first screenshot shows the login page. The designers have set the login page to be the default start page so that when the user clicks on the application he/she logs in to access other information. The design of the login page gives the user an option of putting the username and the password to be able to log in and enjoy the benefits of the application. The provisions of logging in needs authentication for somebody to access the application. From this page, one of the recommendations of the users and stakeholders of security is addressed. The application is secure from unauthorized people because anybody who tries to log in must have the correct username and password. The application ensures the privacy of each user and there are no fears of information sharing with inappropriate people. There is another option of opening the application with Facebook. Social networks have taken control of the lives of most people. Through Facebook, the user of the application is able to share fitness information with friends by posting on their pages.
According to the stakeholders and the users’ the application has to alert the user on the angles to stand when taking the photos. The application needs to take photos of all the positions of the body which include the front view, back view, and side view. The application also has to alert the user on the distance to stand away from the camera. The system integrates the photos and analyses them to determine the workout strategy to employ. The advantages of having this application helps the users to contain their information to themselves rather than exposing it to the medical doctors and medical institutions. People with obesity tend to have a low self esteem, and they do not want people to know their status. The application will enable them to check their status of cholesterol at their convenience places. Although, the system is secure there are possibilities of leaking the information out through use of weak passwords or through untrustworthy service providers.
There is an option of forgot password that allows the user to retrieve the account that is lost through forgetfulness. The last option on the login page is a sign up button. The button enables a new member to open an account for fitness. Fitness 360 application does not discriminate people through race, education level or class, but it is open to all people across the globe. Once an individual opens an account, the account and the information of the user are stored directly to the database. The database of the application is managed online by a service provider. The service provider has the responsibility of ensuring that the data of every individual is safe and confidential. The user has a mandate of showing people his/her own information.
The next photo shows the next page of the application. This is the immediate page after a successful login. The page has an option of moving back one step through clicking on the Back button. The connection between one page of the application to the others gives the user an easy task to go to the next page at ease without switching the application to go to the starting point. The next slot has areas where the user fills in the details. The application requires the name of the person who is using it for easy storage of data. The age of the user is necessary to enable the machine know the mechanisms to use in evaluating an individual, there are activities for old and young people whereby both of them are different. Gender of the individual is necessary to guide the machine to activate the mechanism for the right gender. The height of the individual enables the application to know the area covered by the individual. The weight of the individual allows the machine to determine the problems of an individual in relation to race. After filling in the data, the application provides another option to attach a photo. The option attaches picture gives the user the option to put a picture that is in the memory of the phone. Take picture option, gives the user to take a photo and post it in the frame. The Done command button is necessary to complete the activities of the page. Clicking on done the application automatically goes to the next step.
The third platform of the application displays the whole image of the user and gives the user the option to choose on the part of the body to start exercising. Through touching the body part, the application starts by concentrating on the body part chosen by the user until when the user feels cannot do anything anymore. The user will continue to touch the parts that need a workout until the individual is satisfied. The application not only shows the user what to do, but also how to do it. The page has a button for a profile, when the user dials the button he/she goes to the profile that contains the name, sex, and age of the user. There are options of changing the profile information and put different names. The only hard thing that cannot be changed is the data that shows the activities the patient’s workout. The users and the stakeholder’s anticipations were reached because the system is capable of identifying the problems of an individual.
The application contains all the health workouts that work in different ways to the people’s bodies. The application chooses different workout for each person. The application knows the requisite exercises for building an individual’s muscle. The application also has workouts that are necessary for reducing or increasing an individual’s weight. There is a large number of people in the world who are suffering from obesity, mostly due to the lack of workouts and eating junk food. These people suffering from obesity have the opportunity of losing weight through the Fitness 360 application. During the workout, the phone becomes the instructor and the user are advised to follow all the rules and guidelines to the letter to avoid endangering the body. The application gives the user a duration to complete the exercise, when doing an exercise the application measures the room temperature and assesses the user in relation to the temperature. The users and stakeholders of the application have realized one of their main objective that was to create a product that serves people well and takes away humanly stress.
Fitness 360 is available in the market for people to purchase and use. The marketing stakeholders located the application on the internet and at a place that is easy to get. Advertising, the application, gives it more publicity and most people come to learn about it and make purchases. The most important thing for a business is to make profits from the products produced. Fitness 360 cannot be downloaded for free from the internet and the buyers must pay before receiving the product. The application delivers the best services compared to other applications that are in the market. Development of online selling and buying has made it easy for people to exchange goods and services. Software production is different from other businesses because it depends on the level of security of the entity that produces software. There is a free version that is already in the market and the first people who will install the applications will do it for free. Although, free product is in place, the retail product attracts customers because of the services offered. The free version does not contain all the properties of the application. Releasing the free version to the market is one of the ways of advertising and getting a large number customers (Carol 2011: 45).
The human body has very many complexities and if not taken care of, the body carefully develops toxins. The toxins are very dangerous because they cause death. Creating the Smartphone medical application for commercial use has been in the minds of most stakeholders and users of the application. The users of the medical application are very happy because it exercises their bodies and helps them to remove harmful toxins.
After having a workout, the application reports all the activities conducted while working out. The page displaying the results is designed to show how all the information garnered during the workout. The designers of the program partitioned the body into seven major parts. Different colours indicate each part of the body. The total workout of the day is indicated with the number of exercises conducted that particular time of the workout. The application has an option where the application analyses the data concerning workouts. Arrangement of data accumulates according to days, months, and years. Through the analysis, the user will be able to see whether there is any difference exhibited. The other things that the analysis page includes is the estimated fat percentage, body mass index, waist to hip ratio, basal metabolic rate, and the height and weight of the user. The application also provides for an option where the user will request for the doctors’ advice. The application is programmed basing on the research conducted on 55 people. When there are no changes noticed then the user is recommended to see a medical doctor determine the problem.
Other than providing the analysis, Fitness 360 is also working together with professionals from the medical field such as physicians, cardiologists, and dieticians from the nutrition field and also fitness trainers. Most fitness trainers provide a workout video that replaces an exercise doll as seen in most fitness software in today’s market. A workout video is beneficial to the users than the dolls that exercise movement; the movement in the video is real, and it provides a routine activity just like the professional trainers. The application is elaborate with an exercise routine, together with breathing directives and body parts tension that should be felt during the workout.
When one taps the button for medical advices, a new page shows containing a list of health problems that an individual could be facing. The application also contains a list of the appropriate instructions from the doctors and the prescriptions. The dietician advice tab shows the page that contains the recommended food. The list of food contains the best foods that enable an individual to live a healthy life. There are also recommendations that suggest what the user should avoid.
In conclusion, designing of applications must be compliant to the needs of the users and the stakeholders. A well-designed chronological order of the pages of the application gives the users a humble time to operate the application. In application development, security is a fundamental item that the developer puts in mind. The application in place has security measures because the user must authenticate himself through putting a username and password. The next page of the application contains a form that the user fills into for the purpose of entering the data into the database. The application analyses the information relating to the user and displays the analysed data for recommendations. The recommendations are usually techniques of doing exercises, seeing a medical report that is generated by the application and the list of the food that the user is supposed to eat. Therefore, Fitness 360 is capable of solving peoples’ problems.
References
Carol T. (2011) Five Ways Your Business Can Grab Market Share Today. Accessed at HYPERLINK “http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220670″http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220670
Steward G. (2013) SWOT: The High-Level Self Exam that Boosts Your Bottom Line. CASE STUDIES, MEDICAL ADVERTISING AGENCY. Accessed at http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/medical-advertising-agency/swot.html
Device Advice: Device Registration and Listing. Accessed at: HYPERLINK “http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/HowtoMarketYourDevice/RegistrationandListing/default.htm”http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/HowtoMarketYourDevice/RegistrationandListing/default.htm
Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff – Implementation of Medical Device Establishment Registration and Device Listing Requirements Established by the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/ucm185871.htm).
Information for Healthcare Organizations about FDA’s “Guidance for Industry: Cybersecurity for Networked Medical Devices Containing Off-The-Shelf (OTS) Software” — http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/ucm070634.htm
Medical devices: Mobile Medical Applications. Accessed from: HYPERLINK “http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/ConnectedHealth/MobileMedicalApplications/ucm255978.htm”http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/ConnectedHealth/MobileMedicalApplications/ucm255978.htm
designing research questions
Designing Research Questions
In the book titled, Action research essentials, Craig (2008) argues that action research could incorporate quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method approach, and stresses the need for a research umbrella in formulation of themes, sub-themes and overarching questions. The whole process of developing appropriate questions is facilitated by the literature review and the ideas acquired are then used to write the final report. The sections below discuss some of the themes that are related to service delivery, while suggesting some appropriate research questions.
Motivation of the workers
Improving service delivery levels should be an obvious goal of each business and this objective can be achieved by motivating the workers and encouraging responsible behavior. At the same time, provision of quality services could be enhanced by using appropriate human resource tools to ensure the company hires the right talent and employees are re-trained frequently. To motivate the workers, the management should consider using extrinsic motivators and other elements such as self-directed work teams, personal development opportunities, coaching, empowerment and intrinsic motivators. This information leads to the following research question: Which elements of reward systems impact positively on the quality of service delivery?
Outsourcing the non-core activities
The need to provide customers with quality services and reduce the operating costs have forced companies to embrace innovative elements such as lean production, re-engineered business processes and integrated supply chains. Most importantly, by outsourcing the non-core functions, organizations are able to concentrate on core competencies and provide a unique value to the customers. Beside improving the service delivery, outsourcing can be used for cost reduction, improving financial performance, lowering innovation risk and improving organizational competitiveness (Quinn, 2000). This information provides us with the following research question: which particular non-core functions should be outsourced to improve service delivery?
Improving communication capabilities and proper resource allocation
It is expected that to improve service levels in an organization, communication should be enhanced by reducing the hierarchy levels and adopting more flat structures. In addition, providing employees with enough resources, secures they have the capacity to deliver quality products and services to the customers. This theme leads to the following research question: which communication strategies should an organization embrace to improve service delivery?
References
Craig, D. V. (2008). Action research essentials. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Quinn, B.J. (2000). Outsourcing innovation: The new engine of growth. Sloan Management Review, 41(14), 13-23.
Designing a New Workplace
Title: Designing a New Workplace
(Name)
(Course Name)
(Institution Name)
28th June 2010
Introduction
In recent years, small enterprises have become a major concern as the job markets have increasingly become overcrowded. This is due to the fact that there are many candidates who are seeking for jobs hence in order to create more opportunities many people have embarked on job creation aspect aimed at reducing the large and increasing job seekers. In the same way, small entrepreneurs are faced with a challenge of setting up their own enterprises due to lack of experience in setting up plans for the business as well as failure to execute the best ideas for the enterprise.
A good example is the setting up of Vivienne Restaurant. Vivienne and her two brothers have been faced with various problems such as recruitment of the workers who would be performing various tasks in the restaurants, selection of the best candidates who have relevant skills in the operation as well as the management of the restaurants, training of the selected candidates and also motivating the employees to ensure that they are able to work hard towards attaining the restaurants’ goals. Although Vivienne have desired skills in managing human resource, she would need other people who would help her in this process since her brothers will be dealing with the setting up and the management of the accounts in the restaurants. In this case, Vivienne would need to involve some other professional who are well versed with managing human resource. Other additional issues facing Vivienne in the establishment of Vivienne Restaurant include handling legal matters and finding the appropriate location for the restaurants. It is of the essence to note that since Vivienne restaurant will be dealing with Chinese food, there is a need to decide on the appropriate location aimed at capturing those customers who likes the food especially in such a big town as it is easier to gain more customers in the areas where target customers are many.
For the success of any business, the first aspect is the hard work and adamant determination to achieve the goal (Julwel, 2010). It will be beneficial, if Vivienne collect the necessary details for setting up a small business in Australia. This can be done by conducting a thorough research concerning the business venture in order to know the business strengths and weaknesses. This would help Vivienne take advantage of the competitors and be able to explore the opportunities in the market by facing off the threats that face the business venture. This can be achieved through studying trends in the existing business in the market, their products and services. In this case it would be easier for Vivienne to point out the gap in the market hence work hard in the establishment so as to bridge the gaps created by other Restaurants in the market.
Since Vivienne and her two brothers have already decided on the type of restaurant they want to set up and the facilities that should be provided to the customers. Walter and Stephen will solve all the legal matters and cash proceedings like submitting forms for getting licenses, money matters. On the other hand, Vivienne will be in charge of the recruitment process.
Recruitment and selection of suitable candidates for a job is one of the most difficult processes when starting a business. There are various methodologies for doing recruitment. First step is to identify various job vacancies in the business undertaking (Billsberry, 2007). These include the people who are required to work in the restaurant including the services employees as well as those who may help in the management of the restaurants. After identifying the job vacancies in the business venture such as Head Chef, subordinates, Waitress and Waiters, the human resource management team is supposed to publish the job description and the specifications of the needed person regarding qualification and the desired experience in the job. Consequently, after publishing job specification, the team would make arrangements in advertising the job vacancies, clearly indicating the posts for which application is invited and the requirements for the post. Then, the team would set a date for conducting the tests and interview in order to pick on the best candidates that she would work with to the success of the restaurants. After advertising, candidates who have the desired qualifications would advertise for the posts and on receiving the application form, Vivienne with her committee would review on the application letters and publish a list of the successful candidates thus preceding on to interview the candidate on the set date. Consequently, the review of the result of the interview is required so as to get the best candidate to fill the vacant job. This is attained through a series of discussions among the panel members who conducted the interview who then make decision on the best candidates hence the best employees are selected and are given the job.
According to Grant Cairncross, Simon J. Wilde and Lucinda Hutchins(Research Associate with CEDAR and marketing practitioner of Southern Cross University) training plays a key role in achieving the best service quality. Training makes, a man efficient in discharging his duties at the right time. Training incorporates quality in one’s job. Quality staffs helps in providing quality service and a good customer relationship by satisfying the customer needs. Customers are the real success behind the successfulness of any business. Therefore, for the restaurant to be successful and to face off stiff competition, training of the selected employees is very crucial. This is done by designing questionnaires for the entire management team of Vivienne Restaurants. These questionnaires are aimed at identifying various areas in which the candidates need to be trained on therefore the human resource departments plans a meeting with the entire management team from which the areas which need training are identified and the need for training is verified basing on the identified areas. The human resource department is responsible for planning on the components needed for training programs while the training program includes both technical and soft skills (Mike, 2002). Technical skills include hands on training on the job in both services and the food products handled by the restaurant while soft skills involves good communication, team building as well as management skill to ensure that the employees are well aware of the trends in the business. When all the components which are used in training programs are set up, then the human resource select the best instructor who would give the employees the best training for the job (David and Darrell, 2007). This is done by either outsourcing from other organizations or selecting a person in the management team who have sound knowledge on the programs. In this way, the instructor will be able to use proper methods like practical activities and participation of the candidates in the program activities as well as group discussion, role plays and break sessions which are aimed at encouraging candidates to learn about the new job. Likewise, when the training session is complete, the candidates are enquired about the process. This would help the human resource personnel to know whether the training bore any fruits thus, the new employees are given roles to play depending on the skills they acquire (Leslie, 2002). In the same way, the management team may conduct weekly analysis of the staffs so as to grade their performance.
The management team has to take utmost care to maintain its quality throughout and also see to it that the staffs are not leaving the job in between. In this case, in order to maintain the best employees working in the restaurant, various motivation factors should be adopted. One of the motivation factors is to offer the employees the salary that would help them cater for their daily needs while working for the company (Richard, 2003). It is important to note that a satisfied worker is always a productive worker hence giving the employees reasonable salary based on the work they are doing may bring wonderful performance in the company. In the same way, Vivienne Restaurant management team should ensure that the employees well being is catered for by giving them various benefits like insurance. Furthermore the company need to reward the best performing customers through promotion or the use of rewards for those who perform well. In this way, performance would remain higher as the best employees stick to the company hence success of the restaurant.
Conclusion
Basing on the above analysis, it is vital to note that starting a business venture is very challenging especially for small entrepreneurs. In this regard, it is important to ensure that proper planning for the business are made such as capital, location for the business venture as well as management of human resources as found in the establishment of Vivienne restaurants. Although the owner has enough capital with regard to their family background, there are still many aspects involved in setting a business until it stands. Therefore in my opinion, human resource management should be done with a lot of care since the outcome of the process mainly determines the success of business venture. This is due to the fact that the people brought in to work for the company determine the performance of the business hence it is imperative to select and hire well trained personnel as well as motivating them in order to gain success in the business.
Reference list
Billsberry, J. (2007). Experiencing Recruitment and Selection, New York: John Wiley and Sons
David J. and Darrell K. (2007). The training evaluation process: a practical approach to evaluating corporate training programs, Boston: Springer
Grant C., Simon J. and Lucinda H. (2008). Training and service quality – a case study analysis of regional Australian restaurants, School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Southern Cross University
Julwel K. (2010). Bringing Out the Best in You through Life Challenges, Canada: AEG Publishing Group
Leslie R. (2002). Assessing the value of your training: the evaluation process from training needs to the report to the board, New York: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
Mike Wills. (2002). Managing the training process: putting the principles into practice, New York: Gower Publishing
Richard M. (2003). The dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the 21st century, London: Routledge
HYPERLINK “http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/SmallBusiness/Pages/OverviewforSmallBusiness.aspx” http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/SmallBusiness/Pages/OverviewforSmallBusiness.aspx.
HYPERLINK “http://www.allbusiness.com/accommodation-food-services/food-services-drinking/3476187-1.html” http://www.allbusiness.com/accommodation-food-services/food-services-drinking/3476187-1.html