Introduction
In Insight Through Need-Finding, entrepreneur Akshay Kothari gives an insightful description of his needfinding journey in Rwanda:
“we spent 10 days … really understanding how they live, what they eat, what is their daily process, what are things they actually do, and how does our solution fit into their daily lives”.
To me, Kothari’s work really reflects the core of needfinding: it’s like an archeology about living humans — an ethnography — going into the target population and dig out the needs that motivate their behaviors. It is us researchers’ role to uncover the needs behind actions and words that users often overlook and build a solution that tackles the needs. Without a crucial need, a solution would be an empty shell that loses its flesh, or a boat that lacks an anchor — it wouldn’t talk to its users and make their problems solved.
Topic Selection and Motivation
Until middle school, I had rarely heard about notions like “weight chart” or “daily steps”. My interpretation of my health and fitness level was purely based on intuition: whether I felt energetic that day, how I looked in the mirror, whether there was pain in my body, etc. But now, with the increasing attentions on scientific measures behind fitness control and more developed technologies, it feels almost necessary for us to adopt certain methods to track our bodies’ fitness and health conditions. Out of the curiosity towards such a phenomenon, I decide to find the needs behind those who intentionally keep track of their health or fitness conditions, and how it impacts their interpretation of their own fitness/health.
Needfinding Methodology
Interview strategy
I conducted three semi-structured interviews to explore the users’ needs. The open-ended questions are aimed to let the users tell their stories and educate me about the fitness tracking process.
Interviewee Selection
In order to reach a wider population of user, I chose three interviewees in three different stages of life.:
- Interviewee A is a male undergraduate student at Emory on a pre-law track.
- Interview B is a male business consultant living in the decatur area who just started his career.
- Interviewee C is a female accountant from China who has 3o years of career experience.
They are my friends, family members, and indirect acquaintances. I reached out to them personally through message. Despite the difference in their backgrounds, the three interviewees have one thing in common: they have a regular habit of exercising and care a lot about their body. I wish this mixture of common-grounds and variations can lead to insightful discoveries.
Interview Location & Consent
The interview is conducted in-person or online based on where the interviewee resides. I made sure to conduct the interviews in a confidential environment and acquired consent from all the interviewees to record the audio.
Interview Questions
According to the Anatomy of an interview, there are three main components of an interview: build rapport, evoke stories, and explore emotions. To build rapport, I first introduced myself, explained my goal of the interview, and asked the interviewee how their day went. As I move to the evoke stories & explore emotions stage, I kept my questions open-ended and flexible, but mainly probed into the following topics:
- How did you start to track your fitness/health condition? And what tool do you use?
- Tell me a time you revisit your fitness/health history? What do you find?
- Have you decided to change your fitness plan/lifestyle because of your fitness/health data?
- Are there times you did not track your fitness/health as you usually do? How does that make you feel?
- Do you follow a fitness/health tracking routine? How is it incorporated into your life?
Results
Interview Summary
Interviewee A uses an app connected to a digital weight to track his weight. He looks at the trend graph on the app to understand the change of his body in his fitness journey. He decides whether it’s time to “bulk” or “cut” based on the datas. He also has a photo album and takes picture of his body whenever he notices a huge difference. The picture informs him which muscle groups he should work on. He also looks at the pictures to revisit the meaningful moments in his fitness journey.
Interviewee B uses the notes app on his phone to track every workout. Between sets, he puts down the weight he uses and number of reps he accomplishes. He would revisit the previous workout entry to remind himself of what weight to use. He also takes pictures of himself occasionally as a collection of memory that gives him inspiration.
Interviewee C does not use any tool to manually track her body datas. She remembers her weight each day of the month and the approximate change of weight in the past half year. She told me “it’s impossible for you to not remember that data”. She looks at her sports watch to check her activity level from time to time to determine whether she exercised enough. Besides the daily datas, the most important fitness data to her is her annual body exam report, which she holds as a measurement of her health. She would recognize the health problems and come up with solutions accordingly.
Empathy Map
For each interview, I created an empathy map to understand how the interviewee interact with their own fitness/health records.
Analysis
Common ground
One common need that stands out to me is that all three interviewees try to minimize the time and energy they spend on tracking their body’s datas. All of them have incorporated the activity into their daily routine with the help of some smart devices. Interviewee B has specifically stated that he tries to minimize the mental effort on tracking fitness so he can “use the brain power for creative thinkings”.
I also notice that the interviewees share a need to confirm and understand their body’s fitness level through quantifiable measures. All of them express that the datas let them understand their bodies in a way that he would not have done by just “feeling” it. More specifically, the datas provide them comparisons over time that directly shows them the change in their bodies. It gives them a sense of assurance that they are “doing the right thing” about their bodies, as interviewee A stated.
Surprise
Both interviewee A and B sees the records of their body as a collection of memory in their fitness journey. The pictures of their bodies remind them of the milestones and challenges they have been through. Looking at the progress they have made through the pictures serves as a source of self affirmation and inspiration.
I suppose this is because both interviewees A and B are frequent gym goers who values strength of their bodies. Most notably, interviewee B says the fitness records “shapes how I view myself” and lets him rethink his strength and capability of overcoming challenges.
Tension
Interviewee A and B, as young males in their 20’s, give fitness tracking a sense of meaningfulness and enjoyment. On the other hand, interviewee C, as a mid-aged female, only sees the fitness records as a means to ensure her health. Her reaction to the health reports induce emotions like anxiety, urgence, and concerns. With an increasing level of risk of health problems along with aging, interviewee C holds a rather pragmatic attitude towards her health datas.
Conclusion: what are people seeking in body data tracking?
In backtracking the patterns in people’s decision behind body data tracking, I end up categorizing the needs into 3 types:
- for health/fitness goals:
- Confirmation on the effectiveness of their approaches
- Reference for self-coaching
2. for convenience:
- Minimum brain power put into tracking
- Seamless integration into daily routine
3. for emotional needs:
- Self affirmation & inspiration
- Meaningful Memory
In the next step of this project, I will apply these insights to create a design for a health tracking app. Stay tuned!
