For my project, I have chosen to create an informative article/resource on the Paleo Diet, Gluten-Free Diet, and Vegan Diet. The goal for this project is to give the reader a resource that provides information, recipes, and motivation to becoming a healthier person. This particular document can be used in health magazines or preferably in health websites. The end product of this project is very different from what I originally envisioned. With the tips in the text book, personal judgement, and information gathered, the project I originally pictured has been polished, tailored for the reader, and condensed to maintain the audience's attention. For this author's note, I want to journey through the process and completion of this project including challenges, frustrations, reasoning behind decisions made, and my reflection of the final project. To begin this journey, I want to start off with the design of this project. I debated for a long time about what medium I wanted to use. I knew I wanted my document to be organized, visually appealing, and be used as a resource by and for my readers. In order to pull this off, I narrowed my medium to three different sources. I jumped in between Power Point, a web page, and a Word Document. I ruled out the Word Document because it seemed to be too generic. I felt that I would not have much play room with the design. According to Tebeaux and Dragga, in order for a document to be effective, the document also must be visually intelligible. For me, this meant it must be visually attractive, organized, and well-planned. I ruled out Power Point because I wanted the information presented in a way that would not be too overwhelming or loaded with entirely too many slides. This left me with one other choice, a web page. I have used Weebly a lot for this class, so I feel at this point, I am very familiar with the concept of it. While designing the layout of the article, I played with the many different buttons of Weebly, and there are many options to choose from. After trial and error, I decided to go with a simple layout which includes a large header picture, a smaller picture, and text at the bottom of the page. I came to the conclusion that this layout provided the proper design for relaying this particular information. For my content, I chose to research eating habits and three well known diets: the Paleo Diet, the Vegan Diet, and the Gluten-Free Diet. Eating habits are a curious topic and is it intriguing to most people, especially those that struggle with making healthy eating choices. Therefore, my project is aimed towards this audience. The audience who struggles with being healthy and the audience who might be wanting to make a change in their habits. This is why I chose to include three well known diets. These diets are popular and all have individual benefits. I wanted to give the reader an opportunity to explore these diets in the hope that one particular diet might be the right choice for them or give them solid evidence that these diets are not what they are looking for. Knowing the audience when creating a document is key. According to The Essentials of Technical Communication, when creating a text, it is important to first think about the reader and then the purpose. Doing this key step will guide the purpose of the document, as it did for mine. Questions that I asked myself when designing and researching this project were as follows: Who is my audience? What information can I provide that they can benefit from? What additional resources can I include to make their life more convenient? Following these questions led me to my finished product. As mentioned before, I struggled with picking a medium and a determining factor was what suited my project the best. After deciding a web page was the best option, I then shifted my focus on the design. First impressions are everything and this is true for documents as well. When the reader first opens this web page, I want them to be captivated by the title and have a good understanding of the purpose of this article. My title, Healthy Eating Habits, is a title that is simple, yet vague. Therefore I included a subtitle, A Journey Into the Paleo, Vegan, and Gluten-Free Diets. This focuses and narrows in exactly what will be discussed in the article which in turn, will appeal to the interested reader. The introduction to this project is presented in a way that lays out the purpose of the content. I provided scientific research on eating habits because I felt this was relevant. It is relevant mainly because it is important for people to realize that eating healthier is not going to be an easy task because the eating habits we have are in fact habits. And as we all know, habits are very difficult to break. Therefore, in my introduction I wanted to convey this without necessarily saying it, and provide a solid layout of what my reader can expect to obtain from this article webpage. As for the layout, I wanted the reader to be able to easily access the information they are interested in. Therefore, I broke the diets into tabs. In our text book, a big idea that seems to reoccur is, "simple is best". Having overwhelmed readers makes for having no readers at all. In each tab I also included headings. According to the textbook, frequent headings help the reader know where they are in the document and helps the reader identify key topics. For the "diet tabs" I broke the content down and included mirroring headings for each diet. This way there is consistency throughout the whole article which allows easy reading for the audience (Teabeaux and Dragga). These headings include: 1. What is ____ diet? ( This provides the history of the diet and scientific research that supports this way of eating) 2. What can I eat? ( This includes what you can eat and what you can not eat ). In the "What Can I Eat?" heading, I hyperlinked a website to each tab. This allows the reader to be taken to another page that clearly and plainly lays out a list of things that can be eaten and things that should be avoided. In the "Gluten-Free Tab", I included more headings because I thought it would be beneficial to the reader to have a clear idea about why many people are gluten-free, including those with celiac's disease and gluten sensitivities. Therefore, I wanted to highlight these diseases and disorders in this section. Under the "What Can I Eat Section?", I also included a link that will take the reader to a website of recipes that are appropriate for the diet being discussed. This provides the readers with an added resource, and it provides them with ideas on whether they think this diet is achievable for them. I will add that this part was extremely time consuming and tricky. It took me awhile to figure out the logistics in attaching a file that allowed the audience to retrieve recipes. After much trial and error, I finally found a way I thought would be the most effective. I decided to create another webpage with photographs of the "diet friendly" recipes and hyperlinked word documents with the recipe for the dish. It sounds confusing and trust me it was,but I really think it turned out great! I wanted to take this approach with the recipes because in the food world the common saying is, "You eat with your eyes first." , and I think this holds true when choosing recipes. The first thing the reader will see is the picture of the dish. If the picture it appealing to them, then they will retrieve the recipe, if not, they can skip and find a picture that is the most appealing to them. In the recipes, I tried to include as much of a variety as possible. The sources I have gathered for this project include many journal articles, research projects, personal interviews, and blogs. Although I did not use the personal interviews verbatim, I tried to include some of the big ideas into the article. A lot of what the interviewees said about their diet was repeated in research, and I went with what the research said. I chose to include an annotated bibliography so the reader has a clear idea as to how I incorporated these sources into my article. The illustrations and photographs are used from the internet and have the proper citations. I chose the photographs and illustrations based on what I thought was most appropriate for the content at hand. As always, I tried to use BIG, BOLD, BRIGHT pictures, and again, chose the pictures accordingly to keep the readers engaged at all time. When doing a project such as this, the number one goal is to engage and please the reader. Visual attractiveness, organization, and conciseness are all keys to reader engagement and these are the three topics mentioned in the book that I want to be the most effective in this project. Therefore, I have taken these concepts and have implemented them in my article to ensure I have effectively created a text that is geared towards the reader at hand. I am very pleased with my final project and think this could be very useful in the "health world". |