[Cronometer-development] Fw: Biomarkers thoughts

[Gerald T. <ge...@sa...>]

Forwarding this to the list partly to try out the list and partly to put it 
somewhere less ephemeral than email.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gerald Turnquist" <ge...@sa...>
To: "Aaron Davidson" <aa...@sp...>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: Biomarkers thoughts


> Ok, I think I'm tuning in to the pattern you're going for. I'll paraphrase 
> to see if I've got it.
> - The right hand pane is about one day.
> - The diet page has two parts; the list of food servings consumed and the 
> nutrition analysis at the bottom - all for that one day selected at the 
> top.
> - The biomarkers page is a dilemma. The data entry would be for one day 
> and fits the pattern (multiple entries for some biomarkers, maybe a list 
> similar to the foods on the diet page?). A chart at the bottom showing 
> intra-day measurements would fit the pattern. An inter-day chart spanning 
> multiple days would not.
> - The exercise page seems like it would present the same issues. Data 
> entry for one day, probably allow for multiple entries for the day, desire 
> to see a chart/report for one day, desire to see a chart/report spanning 
> multiple days.
> - The Nutrition Report off the Reports menu seems like the same thing 
> again. That is, it is a view of data across multiple days, this time for 
> food (maybe with the idea of printing or exporting some time?) Right now 
> it is shown as a table but no reason why it wouldn't benefit from some 
> graph or chart view too. It even has the from/to dates I wanted for the 
> biomarker charts.
>
> Seems like we have the same problem in three different disguises. Good 
> news about that is that if we come up with a good solution it might apply 
> across the board. Maybe any intra-day reporting goes on the tab but all 
> inter-day reports are off the Reports menu. I did love my little Weight 
> chart but I confess it was largely because it looked purty, but it doesn't 
> scale up to a whole biomarkers subsystem.
>
> Interestingly, the left hand with the food search, select, create etc. 
> only has a connection with the diet page, not with biomarkers or exercise. 
> Radical thought... should the whole UI become 3 pages that fill the 
> window - Nutrition (Diet), Biomarkers, and Exercise? The left hand side of 
> the Biomarkers and Exercise pages become like the food search, select, 
> create, etc. only for their respective things? Hmm... sounds pretty wild, 
> but makes me think. And I was just going to do a little biomarker 
> renovation. Maybe time to rein in the perfectionist tendencies and do the 
> absolute minimum now to improve it while these more grandiose thoughts 
> gestate. (To be perfectly honest, as a user I could live without any 
> biomarkers or exercise capability at all as long as the nutrition part was 
> excellent and easy to use)
>
>
> As for the database, I was following a similar path with my system, 
> including using it to try out technologies. I did have an HSQL database 
> (DB2 first until I thought I might share the program). The searches were 
> surprisingly fast (not quite as fast as COM) but the program took about 30 
> seconds to load because I was loading the whole nutrients part of the 
> database. I wouldn't do that again for the static data, I prefer the zip 
> files. I'm perfectly happy to shelve the database idea indefinitely and 
> only reconsider it for user data, and then only if the current scheme 
> seems like it can't be shored up to handle a few years of user data.
>
> Gerald