WOW Chapter 9: Evaluation
Arguments over evaluations occur whenever people disagree about the positive or negative qualities of a thing.
Evaluation arguments set out criteria and then judge something to be good or bad or best or worst according to those specific criteria (WOW page 275). Usually we rely on these criteria in order to evaluate something:
- aesthetic standard (judgement based on appearance--beauty, size, shape, color, etc.)
- practical standard (judgement based on usefulness, functionality, cost/value, accessibility)
- ethical standard (judgement based on ethics and morals)
Product Evaluation Instructions and Rubric
Product Evaluation Sample
A Product Evaluation of MyFitnessPal from PCMag.com
By Jill Duffy
We live in a world of temptation, cheap pleasures, stress, and convenience—all of which can affect our diet and health. Losing weight (or maintaining or even gaining weight) takes constant diligence as well as a bit of counting to know how many calories you ingest and expend. MyFitnessPal (free) is a mobile app and website that gives you a wealth of tools for tracking what and how much you eat, and how many calories you burn through activity. Of all the calorie counters I've used, MyFitnessPal, both the mobile app and its website, is by far the easiest service to manage and comes with the largest database of foods and drinks. This impressive service is made even better by its mobile app, which helps you fastidiously watch what you eat 24/7, no matter where you are.The MyFitnessPal iPhone app is a clear Editors' Choice. The versions for Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry are equally impressive although this review focuses on the iPhone app.
Features and Design
MyFitnessPal is a calorie counter and exercise tracker. It can't replace the medical advice of a doctor and nutritionist, but it can help you become more aware of what you eat and help you estimate how many calories you should consume to reach your goal.
To set up an account, you need to enter the usual statistics: height, weight, age, sex, and activity level, which you select after reading a few descriptions. Based on those data, MyFitnessPal guesses how many calories your body burns on a typical day, with no additional exercise.
You next tell MyFitnessPal whether you're trying to lose, maintain, or gain weight, and the app walks you through a few screens in which you select how aggressively you want to try and change your weigh-in numbers. The app leaves it to you to decide how aggressively you want to pursue your goal. You can choose to gain up to one pound per week, or lose up to two pounds per week, but that's the maximum. It then provides a recommended calorie goal for each day.
Every day, you open the app and simply log what you eat. The search functionality is strong in MyFitnessPal. It's fast, and it doesn't matter in what order you type keywords (like "sandwich cheese egg" or "egg and cheese sandwich"). You can optionally log how much water you drink, too. Foods you log often are saved to a list of frequently added items, but you can also select from recently logged items. If you want to customize the caloric value of a recipe you made, there's a recipe builder that can help you with that task.
To use the app fully and properly, you need to log not only what you eat, but also activities, such as runs, swims, and bike rides. Alternatively, you can connect MyFitnessPal to an activity tracker or logging service, such as Fitbit One, Jawbone UP 24, RunKeeper, Withings Pulse O2, MapMyFitness. The full list is impressive. In any event, the more exercise you do, the higher your recommended caloric intake for the day will be.
If you've never used other calorie-logging apps, it's easy to downplay how well MyFitnessPal implements the input tools. You always have the option to select a portion size and quantity of that portion you ate. Take an apple, for instance. MyFitnessPal lets you select a small, medium, or large apple, or a cup of apple slices, and then indicate down to eighths how much of that portion you consumed. The tools are intuitive, so you don't waste a lot of time with your face down turned to your phone at every meal.
You can add push notifications that remind you to, for example, log breakfast if you haven't done so by a certain time of day, but I'd like to see the app offer some more creative reminders. How about a 3:00 p.m. feel-good message to boost your willpower? Or maybe a reminder before dinner to drink a big glass of water? The notifications that MyFitnessPal's iPhone app offers right now are basic and a little on the dull side.
The Competition
Unlike other popular fitness apps, such as Lose It!, MyFitnessPal doesn't have you needlessly jumping from screen to screen every time you log a food you've eaten, beverage you've consumed, or exercise you've completed. That little bit of optimization in usability—keeping you on the screen you need to see, or returning you to it automatically—goes a long way over time, so you can keep moving rather than sitting still, inputting data.
The Database
The food catalog that MyFitnessPal pulls from is outstanding, with brand-name foods from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., restaurant dishes, even recipes from leading cooking and fitness magazines. Most food apps use a database maintained by the USDA, which includes not only fresh foods, but also chain restaurant food and thousands of packaged items.
MyFitnessPal's catalog is so much better than other apps' because it includes recipes, meals, and foods that other users have uploaded in addition to the standard database. Any user can share a recipe that she or he has created, although only from the website (not from the app. The user must specifically choose to do so—the default is always to keep the information private. Many people do share their recipes and food items, and it's a huge part of what makes MyFitnessPal so useful. You can't see who uploaded the information, only the food name and its nutritional information.
Caloric Breakdown and Nutrition Details
A page of your Daily Summary gives you a quick look at your net calorie goal, how many you have consumed so far today, and how many you've burned today. A newsfeed below the summary can be customized to show only the kinds of alerts and updates from your own activity or your friends that you want to see.
MyFitnessPal recommends each user eat a certain percent of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. The app displays this information in a pie chart (see the slideshow). You can view this graph for an entire week's averages, or by day.
During the week, the app also shows you a bar graph of how many calories you consumed each day, and whether you exceeded, hit, or came up short on your intake goal. At the end of the week, the app calculates an average.
Another batch of statistics you can view by week or by day is your list of nutrients. This chart is the one most likely to be off from your actual intake, as there are many foods in the app that don't have complete details filled in. MyFitnessPal warns and reminds you that information might be missing, and it usually doesn't affect the overall calories.
The Best Calorie Counter
MyFitnessPal for iPhone is the best calorie counter and exercise tracker I've tried, hands down. I've used it on and off for about three years, integrated with several other apps and activity trackers, always with happy results. Most important of all, MyFitnessPal's food database is bigger than all others. So long as I need to track the calories I'm consuming and burning, I'll do it with MyFitnessPal.
How does this evaluation argument work?
What does Duffy accomplish in the introduction?
Who is Duffy's target audience? How can you tell this is the audience? What are some other possible audiences and how might this article be different if written for another audience?
Why is Duffy recommending this app? Evaluation Thesis? What are the criteria for evaluation? (X is good because...) What are the 2 or 3 main evaluative standards here? Simply it: You should use MyFitnessPal because...
Thesis: MyFitnessPal is the best calorie counter/fitness tracker app because it offers users easy and efficient ways to mangage their health and eating habits and because it contains the largest database of food and drinks.
Before getting to the first part of her argument (focusing on evaluation criteria), what does Duffy do?
Criteria 1: Offers users easy and efficient ways to manage their health and eating habits
Support?
Criteria 2: Largest Database of food and drinks
Support?
The search functionality is strong in MyFitnessPal. It's fast, and it doesn't matter in what order you type keywords (like "sandwich cheese egg" or "egg and cheese sandwich"). You can optionally log how much water you drink, too. Foods you log often are saved to a list of frequently added items, but you can also select from recently logged items. If you want to customize the caloric value of a recipe you made, there's a recipe builder that can help you with that task.
What criteria is Duffy focusing on here? Is she successful in supporting this criteria? Why or why not?
Why discuss the competition here?
Artistic appeals? Ethos? Logos? Pathos?
What other information maybe useful/convincing?
Although this essay is organized into headers, it is still an essay...it is not a handout. How might we turn this into a handout? What is the difference? What creative elements might we want to add to our handout in order to enhance this evaluation?
What creative elements might we incorporate into our presentation?
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.