Is there healthy food in the hood?
Our design thinking process and session in uptown Manhattan
Short answer: Yes…
…but if you want to hear more about our process, keep reading.
Two weeks ago was my third session in the Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation class sponsored by IDEO.org and Acumen. Our team is based out of New York City and had chosen the design challenge…
“How might we provide healthier food options for people in need?”
Everyone is either from or close to NYC so we bounded our problem to New York City. One of our teammates picked a neighborhood in New York and we went to investigate.
First I will describe the beginning of our process after choosing our challenge. We are using tools provided by the class website. We picked a location to investigate, a community, made an interview guide (a set of questions to guide the conversation). I also took at the look at the human centered design methods website for some tips before hand. Our plan was to walk around the street, interview people in near-by eateries, and the local supermarket.
After deciding our challenge and our first step was to collect information. We made a list of places and potential people to speak with. Instead of telling you what we thought of, I am going to give you some pictures and information and see what you come up with first.
Take a look at the pictures. See anything interesting?
What are some observations you notice?
Quote: “You don’t have cliff bars?” (18, boy, candy store)
After walking around the street we made out way into the local grocery store.
Quotes: “Buying healthy food is expensive” (40+, women)
“I make salads at home” (60+, man)
“It depends what herbs are used [to prepare the food]” (30+, women)
Whats your favorite food? “fried chicken” (multiple people)
Notes: One women took two buses to get to this supermarket because it has ‘good deals’. She also used to work there.
Lets pause from observations. Did you notice anything or hear anything interesting? I am cheating a little as there was a lot more information and pictures and I am grouping like pictures together, but here is a sample of an ‘insight’ we came up with.
People want to feel like they are getting a deal
It seems simple, but there were many more advertisements for ‘unhealthy’ food, people were looking at the advertised deals, people where carrying circulars or had then in their cart. Comparing the display of fresh fruit versus the other refrigerated aisle, it had less yellow sale tags dispersed over the shelf making it look like there were less deals.
There are many other observations and insights, but I wanted to provide an example of how they are synthesized in the next phase (Ideate) of the process. Lets take a step back to discovering.
What else do you observe?
People in need are not buying healthy foods to-go
Another insight from observing shopping carts full of healthy and unhealthy food and also going to a local grocer selling many ‘healthy’ food options. This is just a sample of our insights, there is much more. How did we get there?
We went to eateries or shopping centers and stopped people along the way to interview people at each place. Afterwards we put all our insights onto post-its (trying to stick to the rule one idea/fact per post-it). This is the first step in the next (Ideate) phase where we are interpreting our observations and interview findings. Then we grouped them based on themes. Sometimes regrouping and moving groups of post-its around to identify these themes.
After we group the post-its and identify themes (attempting to limit to 3-5 themes) and we identify insights under each theme (those were two examples above).
The final part of the exercise is coming up with ‘How might we’ statements. How would you change the insight below into a ‘How might we’ statement?
People want to feel like they are getting a deal
Here is our take.
How might we help people feel like they are getting a deal for healthy food?
or, combining the two insights above…
How might we increase the amount of on-the-go healthy food deals?
So our next steps were going through all our insights (or picking our favorite) and creating how might we statements before we go into the Prototype phase which includes brainstorming (my favorite). Next time I have to remember to focus more on personas and interviews which helps find more facts for post-its.
Stay tuned next time for the Prototype phase and post-it bonanza. Click here to see the next post.
