Design

Health and Wellness: Research and Analysis

Time for an update right? It’s been a week and by the way I’m naming these titles, it’s looking like a software development life cycle (SDCL *shutters*). I was hoping for a more agile approach, but then again, this is school and going through the processes is pretty essential. So from my previous post, I was pretty anxious to get into the research aspect and get to know the area of interest we were exploring…

The Game Plan

Our team broke up into two main groups: Marilyn had scheduled a focus group in Bainbridge Island (where she lives) with a few of her friends. Her plan was to do some make type activities to get people to share their thoughts on health and wellness in relationship to purchased goods. The second group (Scott, Tojo, Hulya and myself) planned to travel out to Northgate Mall and conduct observational studies in different stores. Our goal was to better understand the ecology of a typical consumer shopping environment and the interactions that go on between products, people and sales associates. In addition, Scott and Tojo planned to contact local specialists on campus to get some feedback from expert opinions while Hulya and myself went on to ask the online communities for some help in answering questions on their past experiences with health and wellness. Last, we were all expected to have at least three interviews completed with people within our network. Mostly people who are easily accessible like friends, family, or colleagues at work.

The ultimate goal is to get an initial understanding feel of what we are getting into and how well our initial vision withstands the real world views of those around us. What we found was interesting, and will only be more compelling as we move into a more focused research attitude in the days to come.

Field Observations and Interviews

At Northgate Mall we made some interesting observation. Here are some bits from my notes:

• Shopping is done at a glance and involves a lot of browsing activity
• Shopping in pairs
• Requires a lot of feedback (ie testing products in store, touching, evaluating, asking questions)
• Brand names carry a lot of assumptions on qualities
• Different ecologies: difference between a store front and a kiosk
• kiosks require standing and very engaging interactions
• store fronts allow sitting and hands on browsing
• Elderly people and boyfriends/husbands spend time at the waiting areas and have little to do
• Read into marketing material and labels (ie “Style infusion” and “volumizing”)
• Using lists to keep track of what needs to be bought
• People go into stores with expectations because of the store name
• When people know what they want, they really want it

The other guys got a lot of great information too from their interviews. Marilyn was able to follow two of her friends as they went shopping at a local farmer’s market while the rest of us did more indepth interviews gettings them to talk about the last significant purchase they’ve made and what it means to them. Our goal was to get people interested by having them talk about something they thought was meaningful. Plus, our intent was to observe the behaviors of shoppers and what they think. This sort of came about after listening to Nelle Steele doing a practice interview with Marilyn. After the interviews, Hulya and I posted questions up in a futile attempt to cast a wider net. Isn’t it like, doing online research, expect 10% in response (on average). Well with an online community of hundreds, 10 would’ve been fantastic! To this day, we got three, one of which is the Chairman for Wellness.com. He was interested in supporting our research and design if there was a way to benefit mutually. Neato. Well, until we figure out what exactly we are designing, there isn’t much to discuss. But we will be looking forward to it!

Information About Data

What did we learn? A few things.

People do care, they only think about it when they are told they did something great.

If Apple told me that buying this iPod was good for the environment, then I would probably buy more from them.

People do care, but the information isn’t there.

When I hear about child labor conditions and other things that just don’t seem right, it makes me think. I believe that if more people knew about this, then more action would take place.

People will find information when they want to. They are their own person.

I don’t need someone telling me how to think or what to do. If I really wanted to find out about something, I’d go out and do it myself.

For those more active, it’s more than just about them. (duh, kind of)

When we go out to buy goods like foods at the market, we don’t consider our own benefit, but what it means to the rest of the community and the environment.

These interviews showed a lot about the attitudes and feelings individuals have around the topic of environmental health and consumption. You can see these also in statistical data found here (granted a little dated):

Source: Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation

We see that a great opportunity that would have significant impact would be to design for the “sprout” population. Sprouts are considered as:

One-third of the US population is classified as Sprouts. They are willing to engage in environmental activities from time to time but only when it requires little effort. Thus, recycling, which is curbside in many communities, is their main green activity. They read labels for greenness - although less often than the True-Blues and Greenbacks neighbors. Their greenness ends at the supermarket check-out: even though Sprouts and Greenbacks have similar median incomes, Sprouts generally won’t choose a green product if it is more expensive than others on the shelf. When they do, they are only willing to pay up to 4 percent extra. More than half (56 percent) are female and at 43, they have the highest median age of any of the five groups. Sprouts are distributed evenly across the country. They are well educated, and just under two-thirds of them are married. They comprise the swing group that can go either way on any environmental issue. With more education, they are often the source for new Greenbacks and True-Blues.

The part about more education is key. How can we help educate these people? By doing what we proposed, showing them the immediate feedback that is normally invisible to see or experience because change happens over time. Being able to interact with change will be the motivational factor that drives people’s curiosities and inspirations into actionable pursuits. Sounds easy right? Hell no. We haven’t even gotten to designing anything. That’s where the next part comes to play…

Next Steps

Make a nifty presentation and let the whole class know what we found out! Most importantly though, is developing concepts and design scenarios based on our research after the show.

Next up, concepts!

© 2007 Fieldnotes.