Our assignment:
- Provide additional insights into consumer attitudes and behaviors relative tohealth
- Identify unmet/unspoken needs relative to health
- Generate ideas for products and service that meet those needs
- Create basic prototypes of those ideas
- Concepts of systems for behavior intervention
- Presentation clearly outlining the system, how it works, and how it can scale
The first steps in this project involved brainstorming and human factors research.
Ethnographic research- I've interviewed over 25 people in the last week regarding the issue of health. As we refine the scope of our design I've been refining my questions and picking more specific populations to interview.
I started by interviewing individuals who spanned the gamut of "extreme users" in regards to insights on health: alcohol addiction, exercise obsession, serious althlete, new mom, pre-diabetic (extreme diet change), very healthy eater, unhealthy eater, unaware eater, single full-time working mother of preschooler, overweight and unmotivated individual, manager of a store that sells pre-made almost-ready meals, hospital cafe staff, Stanford janitor.
I gathered heaps of great information from these individuals that helped us refine our scope.
I'm paired with John and David for this project. In our most recent brainstorm, we narrowed in on an idea that spawned from three of our high-level categories that developed from our preliminary human factors research:
1. ritual
2. uninvolved/inactive kids
3. power of psychological/mental
Our idea has to do with the process of food creation/preparation- the reality that most kids are not involved in the process of making what they eat- also that they are unaware of the origin of the foods they eat. We suspect this lead to adults who are unaware of how to prepare tasty, healthy foods. This results in an unexcitement with food preparation, and an indifference towards the increasingly prevalent unhealthy and wasteful trends of eating.
Since the first round of interviews, we've defined our user group to be elementary-middle school-aged children.
I've moved into interviewing: 5th grader who has healthy eating habits, mother of 5th grader who has an extremely obese sister and niece, 3rd grader who has moderately healthy eating habits, mother of 3rd grader who is very busy with three kids and a full-time job, my own mom on how she raised me to be a healthy eater.
I'm hoping to gain access to a school lunch to observe- or at least observe at a large gathering of children and hopefully introduce some prototypes if we have time.
Images below:
I think the current food pyramid is an aweful design. I remember when it was revealed and I felt the same way then (even before I became a critical designer...). The shape affords no hierarchy of information- apart from the yellow strip (the bad stuff) I have no idea from this chart what stuff I should be eating the most.
This is a photo of a typical meal order at "delish"- the store that sells fresh and frozen almost-ready meals. The most interesting thing I learned from my conversation with the manager was that the 'psychologial effect of saying "I made dinner" is so critical to this company's success.' I found this intriguing. It's more than just knowing it's healthy food- it's that feeling that you're doing something good for your kids- that you put some time into preparation, that allows you to not get mad at yourself for picking up takeout or microwave a dinner. Even though it might only require 10 minutes of prep, it's enough to allow busy moms and dads to feel like they are good parents. And this is essential in preventing a downward spiral of unhealthy habits.
I'm beginning to observe how exactly kids eat. We brainstormed the types of snacks kids like:
themed, crunchy/crispy, with hands, one at a time, rolled, funsize (mini), inedible looking or named, on a stick, pop it in your mouth.
We are fascinated by the "ants on a log" concept and will be expanding more on this over the course of the next week and a half for our design solution.
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