Home Improvement

A Doctor’s Kitchen recently served as a case study in a communications course at Massachusetts Bay Community College, taught by the brilliant and engaging Mary Garrison. Through the efforts of Mary and her students, and the technical wizardry of my assistant, Gabe Stein, we’ve improved this site in a number of ways. Among the changes:

• A tag line
• A “Home” image that appears when your cursor enters the logo space
• Notification of launch date (to explain the small size of the recipe data base)
• Clickable photos
• Capacity to print the recipe only, without the accompanying blog text

However, Mary’s class stimulated discussion beyond their specific recommendations. After viewing the website from the students’ perspective, both Gabe and I noticed other flaws which we’ve tried to address. For example, we realized that the participatory area was confusing, so we streamlined it: We deleted the Lab and Collaborative and expanded the Spa, which has now become the site’s collaboration center.  It still features healthy make-overs, but it also presents Georgie Fear’s original recipes as well as visitors’ submissions- both healthy and conventional.

Perhaps more important, we’ve taken steps to spotlight the strategic aspect of my work, so that visitors can see clearly how I approach healthy cooking and develop the ability to apply my strategies and techniques to their own recipes. To that end, a “Strategies” button has replaced “Techniques” in the nav bar, and we’ve added a “STRATEGY SESSION” to every post that details the thinking behind the recipe. We believe these changes will make it easier for people to reduce fat and calories, upgrade fats, and moderate glycemic load for themselves, no matter what they’re cooking.

If you’d like to put your 2 cents in, you can submit suggestions via the comment form that follows each post or the contact button in the nav bar.

THANKS MARY, MBCC STUDENTS, AND GABE!!