Fresh Value | Human-centered design | Mobile app design
As part of the online course 'Introduction to human-centered design' offered by ideo.org and +Acumen, we got together and decided to solve the following design challenge :
'How might we provide healthier food options for people in need ?'
The human-centered design process is divided into 3 main phases :
1st phase : inspiration
The inspiration phase is basically about getting out into the world and learn from people.
There are three main ways to do it : interview with users, interview with experts, observation/immersion in a relevant place.
Neha and Ned had interviews with people in need (our potential users), Vedanshi conducted an immersion into fast-food outlets and David went to a food bank distribution to observe and have a conversation with the managing team (experts).
We also found inspiration in analogous examples such as public health policies to change public opinion on smoking (our challenge was also about modifying behavior for better health) and dollar stores (successful initiative targeting people in need).
Quote from user interviews
Quote from expert interview
Healthy food options available in fast-food outlets
2nd phase : ideation
The ideation phase is about transforming the research into innovative concepts to prototype.
We started by sharing among the team the learnings each of us previously gathered by getting out into the world :
We then grouped those shared learnings by main themes :
From those themes, we defined insights and voted for the three main ones :
We derived from those three main insights, the three 'how might we' questions that would guide our upcoming brainstorming session :
- How might we make meal budgeting easier ?
- How might we make fresh food last longer ?
- How might we change people's behavior to adopt healthier diets ?
For each 'how might we' question, we spent 15 minutes brainstorming ideas. At this stage, our goal was to generate the maximum amount of ideas. We worked as a remote team and expected this part of the process to be tricky but we could manage to run it smoothly with the help of an online collaboration tool called MURAL.
Our post-it (virtual) wall
We then selected and attributed a score to the ideas we thought would be the most successful on one hand and the most innovative on the other hand.
Our selection of successful and innovative ideas
After a group conversation and thinking back about what would be the best solution to solve our design challenge, we finally agreed on moving forward with the idea #2 :
'A pre-paid card that loads food budget onto a card to use at local supermarkets/shops. Card gets discount on fresh and healthy food and users can receive suggestions of recipes.'
It was time to refine our idea. We started by drafting a storyboard to better visualize the user journey :
First version of our storyboard
By doing this work, we identified that it would be good to first validate if users were interested in our value proposition. We built a rough prototype and put it in the hands of some potential users to do just that. We received mostly positive feedback and in the normal course of events we would have iterated and worked on a more refined prototype but as part of the class we directly moved to the implementation phase.
Animation of our prototype
3rd phase : implementation
The implementation phase is about understanding how to bring to life and to market the solution ideated in the second phase.
To be able to build our product and get partnerships with supermarkets and food shops, we identified that attracting investors would be a key step. We then focused our efforts on crafting a one-minute pitch :
Transcript of our one-minute pitch
