Interrelations

With many food stores closing and jobs shutting down, the recipe project has become more important than ever. This is around the time it is coming to fruition more than before because our usability tests are being made and our recipes have already been decided, along with our proposal. This project is important for college students living on a strict budget and also for families that are struggling. Making recipes that are cheap and have few ingredients is of utmost importance in our world recently. This is prevalent now more than ever because of the economical and worldly changes that are taking place in our environment.

An interesting topic I found on our academic site was how all of our documents and classes can relate to each other. Thinking about this broadly, it is interesting to see how making cheap recipes could relate to the state that the world is in today. By having quick, easy recipes to make with inexpensive foods that are still filling, myself and other citizens can have fast meals in this trying time. It is also relevant to me as a future healthcare provider and a student that has worked many hours of clinical experience. I would get to the hospital an hour or two before clinical started, stayed for my eight hour shift, and then had a post conference afterwards, without eating all day. These recipes are actually something I am really interested in because I am always looking for quick, cheap recipes to make before clinical that keep me full.

This is also just my personal class load, but other majors have classes and labs that keep them away from their apartments for extended periods of time. So having many different audiences that this project identifies with extends its credibility and usability for many different purposes.

It is important to portray to the audience the purpose of what is being done, the audience’s “concerns and characteristics, education and experience in the subject, location and workplace situation, and attitudes towards the purpose” (Pearsall, 2010). This is why the persona for the usability testing must identify all these attributes so they can be managed accordingly when creating the instructions for the recipes. This relates to what I identify with the best, healthcare, when dealing with various patients. Each patient will have a different knowledge base, so explaining their care to them will take differing amounts of time and effort. Each patient also has diverse levels of concern over their health. Some care and want to learn everything they can to prevent relapse back into the hospital, while others do not show the same involvement. The purpose for patients depends on what level of care they are being treated at. At the top of every patient’s goal and purpose for care is to restore them to their previous level of health or get them the care they need to enhance their lives as much as possible. Some patients are compliant in restoring this goal and others are less obedient. 

The usability testing lets us decide whether recipe instructions are easily manipulated in experiential form. It allows the user to develop the best way, or most heuristic way, to understand recipes and create them individually. This also relates to my healthcare background because things like pamphlets regarding patients’ diagnosis’ or medications need to be easy to understand and comprehend. The Joint Commission recommends reading materials at, “sixth and seventh-grade levels” (2007). Health literacy is something that I think about when creating instructions for recipes that any person can follow. 

On a separate note to show its diversity in other disciplines, the recipe project can be related to other classes as well. I am a psychology minor and took a theories class last semester on how, why, and by who, many psychological tests and measurements had been created. This relates to our recipe project in the fact that important instructions had to be crafted to make the psychological tests. There are many instructions and testing requirements that need to be carefully considered with those measurements. As recipes need to go through usability testing to make sure that average people can follow the directions made, psychological tests need to undergo the same testing. In addition, this also relates to a personal financial class that I have taken previously. That class related to bills, bankruptcy, finances, and important documents such as tax forms. All of these financial documents need important and very clear instruction on them to ensure proper documentation. This is relevant to these documents as well as to health literacy in the fact that they should be in readable terms to the average citizen. All classes, general education or required of majors, can be interrelated to show importance in things we do. 

The recipe project can be used for any population base and should be designed for many audiences. It can be interrelated and similar to many basic elements that are required of other classes and assignments. The purpose of someone’s document or project should be carefully designed to include many of the elements that relate to the audience such as their education, attitudes, or concerns. 

Pearsall, T. E., & Cook, K. C. (2010). The elements of technical writing. New York, NY: Longman.

Joint Commission. (2007). “What did the doctor say?” Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety. Retrieved from https://www.jointcommission.org/-/media/tjc/idev-imports/topics-assets/what-did-the-doctor-say-improving-health-literacy-to-protect-patient-safety/improving_health_literacypdf.pdf?db=web&hash=0FC8437817D493B2C0223D100557889E