Hungry 4 Health - Providing Awareness to Childhood Obesity and Solutions for a Healthier Child
Making Healthy Choices for Yourself is Tough. Trying to Make Them for Your Children can be Overwhelming.
January 19, 2019 for the duration of three weeks myself and three others took on childhood obesity. Of course we weren't arrogant enough to think we are going to eliminate it. The goal was to bring awareness and to provide knowledge on how to combat it. To help mothers find answers to what they need for a healthy child. I relied heavily on the platforms of Sketch, Illustrator, InVision and good old fashion research to accomplish my goals.
Discovering Our User
You can't make a successful product without knowing who you are making it for. It was very important to gather as much information as we could to determine what the user needs. So first the group and I came up with our list of assumptions. These ranged from lack of exercise to the cost of health food itself. Then we made a list challenging those assumptions. Next we took our lists and crafted our survey using Google Docs survey template. I was conscious of not making the survey too long for fear of scaring away my potential survey takers. From the survey I put together a more in-depth interview script and began the research process.
List of Assumptions
Obesity Survey
When we began I was sure screen time and the lack of exercise would be the culprit in the cause of childhood obesity. To my surprise the research pointed to the lack of knowledge. The interviews, especially, told us that they needed knowledge of the right foods to feed their children. We also found that it was the mothers who were most engaged in the nutrition of their children. One problem mothers had was finding the healthy foods to eat. The second problem was how to prepare the food in a healthy way. Another interesting discovery was the challenge of getting picky eaters to eat healthy. Especially when these children only wanted to eat junk food. Other discoveries were the cost of eating healthy verses the ease of fast food. Even though it wasn't high on the list, exercise and screen time were discussed. It was from this information that our persona was formed.
Interview Data
Our User
After our interviews and surveys were done we were able to conclude our user was a stay at home mother in her early 20's to mid 30's. Her concerns were having the tools to help her raise healthy children and to be an example of good health herself. She wants to put her family on the right path to health so they can carry it into their adult life.
The Solution
After going through the research the group and I felt a blog was the answer. It was the best way we could address the users needs. The trick was getting them the information they wanted in the most pleasant way possible. At first I thought to structure the home page with videos, articles, and quizzes. This however proved through testing to be overwhelming. Most people had an idea of what they needed. So having them search through the home page to find their interest wasn't user friendly. So I decided to group each topic with the latest articles and videos. The user could go directly to their topic of interest. If they wanted more information they could go to the main menu and choose archived information on their topic. This proved successful and after further testing the user found it very helpful.
Low Fidelity Wireframe
Hi Fidelity Wireframe
Closing Remarks
After our user testing and a few more UI tweaks the final product was completed. We are confident that a user will find the answers they need to put them on the right path to a healthy lifestyle. Are we going to eliminate childhood obesity? No. We will however, bring awareness to the problem and put people on the path to knowledge.