Christina M. Lirot, Diane Cessna, and Kay H. ConnellyComputer Science Department, Indiana University

Bloomington, Indiana 47405

Stage One

The first stage of the project will be to develop the software for updating and accessing the database. The picture below shows the high-level architecture of our solution, which consists of the following components:

a PDA program that works with a barcode reader to facilitate data entry

a web service on the server to which the PDA program automatically connects to upload entries

a verifier on the server that automatically gets entries before updating the database

a web service to provide read-only database access to 3rd-party applications

a user-friendly web site for human access to the database

PDA Interface Development

We are currently creating the PDA interface design in Visual C# .Net Framework. We are developing scanned screen environment and a manual screen environment for ones who do not have barcode readers. This will also be available via the web. There are several screen shots shown below. This will give you the basics for manually entering the information.

Stage Two

Do we Trust the Information in the Database?

For many, incorrect nutritional information could have devastating effects. Diabetics, dialysis patients and people with allergies are examples of populations that could both use such a database, and be harmed by incorrect information. We have taken steps to ensure that the accuracy of the data in the database is enough for the benefits of using our database to outweigh the risks of receiving inaccurate information.

We have identified and evaluated trust models to determine which is most appropriate for this application.

We intend to use trust and reputation scores to allow the user to make a more informed decision before trusting an entry in the database.

We will be combining aspects from trust models similar to those used by Ebay and Wikipedia.

We will create the user interface in a way that minimal text entry is required.

References

Kay Connelly, Katie A. Siek, Yvonne Rogers, Josette Jones, Michael A. Kraus, Susan Perkins, Laurie L. Trevino and Janet L. Welch, Designing a PDA Interface for Dialysis Patients to monitor diet in their everyday Life. In the Proceedings of HCI International 2005.

English, Colin, Nixon Paddy, et al. Dynamic Trust Models for Ubiquitous Computing Environments. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde presentation 2004.

S.S. Intille, C. Kukla, R. Farzanfar, and W. Bakr, “Just-in-time technology to encourage incremental, dietary behavior change,” in Proceedings of the AMIA 2003 Symposium: Wiley 2003.

data entry units

server

databasedata access units

The second stage of the project is to seed the database with enough entries to demonstrate its usefulness to the public. In addition to manually entering data for a specific category of food (i.e. breakfast cereals), we will investigate how to encourage specific populations to participate in seeding the database by providing incentives. A basic incentive is the ability to use the database through the web-site and/or through a nutrition monitoring application. A more obvious incentive is a chance to win a $100 gift certificate for every 30 valid entries.

The PDA program will allow for very fast entry of nutritional information and the ability to link it to the bar code. The web service will allow multiple entries of the same UPC and will forward the entries to the verifier. The verifier can use redundant entries to facilitate automatically detecting errors and assigning trust levels to data. For example, if an item has been entered 5 times with the same values, the data would be deemed highly trustworthy; whereas if an item has been entered twice and has conflicting data, the data would have a low trust value.

Will the Population Make the Entries?

We will investigate the best approach for getting people to make entries. We will conduct a user study of a particular motivated population to see if the motivation of being helped by the product is enough to elicit participation, or if other means are necessary. Specifically, we will send a PDA equipped with a bar code reader and our data entry application home with diabetics. For the control group, we will show the participants how to access the data through the web interface, as well as provide them with a simple PDA application that helps them track their nutrition if the foods they eat are present in the database. For another group, we will provide an incentive program as well. Incentives will be based on the number of entries submitted. For example, they may be entered into a raffle for a prize after a certain number of entries. We will record the number of entries participants make over a two week period, and monitor their entries for errors. In this way, we will determine the type of monetary investment that would be required to initially populate the database.

START