The Crisis..
The world today has a problem with food, motivation, and diets.
The world today has a problem with food, motivation, and diets.
Define
Define
Deliver
Deliver
Post Delivery
Our Process
No, our approach was not linear - this is a very simple representation of the chaos we ran through..
As a business designer, my first task was to setup an operational structure for the service, and how we wanted to establish the venture. I drew a timeline, a functionality chart, and key tasks for each team member.
This followed a discussion with core members to ensure the venture remains bootstrapped, a user count aim and potential partnerships that I needed to work on.
Business Designer
User Experience Researcher
Jan 2023 - May 2023
New York City
I AM
a digital healthcare intervention
Historically,
We believe we got to this place because the health industry was acting on this equation:
weight + diet = better total health
weight + diet = better total health
We think to address this health crisis, we have to ditch the binary of physical and mental treatments, and approach health holistically. We understand that our body and mind work in one feedback loop.
physical wellness + mental peace = better total health
We wanted to understand what goes inside the human mind and body, what all impacts the life of a person, from their moods, to the shape of the body, the relations we live through, the social networks we build, the communities we flourish or fall through..
I AM, as a platform, grew somewhere here, identifying to strengthen YOUR relationship with the Chaos in YOUR life..
secondary research synthesis
Developing issues with physical and mental societal health..
secondary research
Diving deeper into my role, I worked as the business designer and user experience researcher for the project:
drafting the research plan conducting one-on-one interviews, synthesizing primary and secondary data, and conducting think-aloud sessions for prototype-testing with multiple stakeholders.
crafting the organizational vision and mission to map out operational activities, from day 1 to day 90, and way forward, leading the expansion strategy post launch.
designing the business model, refining partnerships, finances, team structures, etc. to craft smarter, more focussed outputs by not just the service, but the system as a whole
Obviously, dancing my way through chaos.............
I also chalked out our strengths and weaknesses as a team, mapping down skills we needed to develop, skills that needed external help to fix, skills that we were developing, and skills we could delegate further keeping our individual expertise in mind.
The idea was to not just map project work, but also operational viability of the team.
Fitness
We hope to aid people in their physical fitness, defined by our project as “how fit you are when you are mentally feeling your best.”
Diet
We want to provide people with a way to intentionally reflect on how their consumption effects their mood.
Mental Health
We aim to create a tool that can bring peace, clarity, and information for users who are hoping to engage in healthier mental health practices.
We approached our issue with a blank slate of capabilities, opening our eyes to movement and growth in three categories, making way for GROWTH:
Our research was helping us learn that humans today need encouragement for reflective, valuable growth.
By enabling users to read and understand their own data, we can help them engage in healthier behaviors.
With the help of 5 very specific interviews, we developed multiple prototypes for the concept.
I AM as a platform was born in the midst of a global health crisis. Over the past three years anxiety, depression, and disordered eating have been on the rise, while we as a society continue to demonize our bodies for the states in which they exist.
concept design and testing
Watch the video to learn more..
Next Steps
1. Competitive Analysis
Auditing over 23 different platforms addressing fitness, diet, mental health and self improvement, revealed the need for systems to operate in sync and not isolation
2. Research Takeaways
The need for community, motivation, ease of use, mindfulness, fun, among other aspects seem to be the need of the hour for users to not just take care of self, but also change the known mindset
3. Opportunity Areas
With gaps that highlight the need for trust within the ecosystem, focus on evidence-based research over claims, wellness over cures and personalization, users need comfort and not fingers pointing at them for imbalance in health.
4. Rise of the Archetypes
From the mental health help seekers, to the lifestyle change markers, and the fitness freaks, every one needs support. And that is normal. We are human.
12+ interviews
As we started getting an idea of the concept, we also started recruiting participants to conduct concept testing interviews.
My role included co-designing the interview guide, coordinating with the participants, and conducting focussed interviews with not just users, but also industry experts.
We also got the opportunity to speak with the CEO of one of leading platforms in this ecosystem.
Today..
After we presented our thesis, the project was on hold. Today, Meshwa and I are looking to connect with like-minded people to help us develop the project further.
Retrospecting on the project, I remember discussing how almost all of our interview participants and the three of us have felt like our bodies were not good enough, at some point.
Sad. Isn't it?!
High time we rework on this mindset.