Tasks
One: Research User-Centred Design Processes or Tools
- Research three user-centred design processes or tools that can be used to discover a core need or problem e.g. customer journey maps, service safaris, a day in the life, cultural probe, double diamond.
- Select one process and write a short 100-word description to illustrate how it can be used to discover an insight or challenge.
Two: Research Existing Campaign or Service Design Project
- Research and select one existing campaign or service design project that tackles a social problem and analyse its effectiveness. Please remember to include information about any user-centred design processes that may have been used and the impact it brought about.
- Write a 300 – 400 word description with screen grabs to illustrate your research findings.
New week, new brief!
One: Research User-Centred Design Processes or Tools
Research three user-centred design processes or tools that can be used to discover a core need or problem e.g. customer journey maps, service safaris, a day in the life, cultural probe, double diamond.
User Scenarios
The three tools I have chosen revolve around different parts of the process of the service design process. The first one, user scenarios, begins to imagine why and how a user might begin to engage with the service and give context around the service. Personas are a precursor to user scenarios, and then the scenarios take the personas through the service to question whether it would allow the user to meet the goal. It should avoid stereotypes and unrealistic assumptions, and include story items like a plot, context, motivations and how the service allows them to fulfil that. Breaking down the users’ needs like this allows the designers to define suitable requirements for the service that will match the scenarios.
Concept Walkthrough
Later in the design process, the designer will need feedback from potential users so that they can identify what works and what can be improved. Prior to this, the concept might only have been tested within the designers, and a concept walkthrough is an early way in which to test its effectiveness. To make this tool effective, a designer needs mock-ups and images to demonstrate the service to the users. A concept walkthrough is task-specific, rather than heuristic and gives a holistic impression. By slowing down the process and allowing users into the design process at this early point means that each decision can be validated or changed and real-life insight into users minds.
Success Metrics
The previous two tools have been qualitative: gathering information from users. Success metrics are quantitative and measure how users are engaging with the service in real life. The number of users will be higher than can be captured by interviews and can be conducted remotely by questionnaires during and after user engagement. Metrics are vital to how the service is actually serving the users and whether any adjustments can be made to enhance the experience.
Select one process and write a short 100-word description to illustrate how it can be used to discover an insight or challenge.
User scenarios are a tool that begins to imagine why and how a user might begin to engage with the service and give context around the service. Personas are a precursor to user scenarios, and then the scenarios take the personas through the service to question whether it would allow the user to meet the goal. It should avoid stereotypes and unrealistic assumptions, and include story items like a plot, context, motivations and how the service allows them to fulfil that. Breaking down the users’ needs like this allows the designers to define suitable requirements for the service that will match the scenarios.
Two: Research Existing Campaign or Service Design Project
Research and select one existing campaign or service design project that tackles a social problem and analyse its effectiveness. Please remember to include information about any user-centred design processes that may have been used and the impact it brought about.
I’ve always found this campaign to get more women into exercise and sport very inspiring because it shows exercise to be something we enjoy, rather than school PE lessons that most people hate. Exercise is for everyone and is essential to staying healthy. The campaign focusses on different women and reasons why they don’t exercise and shows them pushing through that. For the task I’d like to go more in-depth in the campaign to see how they built different personas that lots of people can identify with.
This is my research which I will distil into the description below.
- First TV ad aired in January 2015, with hashtag this girl can
- Created in response to Sport England’s Active People Survey in 2014 that found 75% of women aged 14_40 wanted to exercise in more, with 2 million fewer women exercising than men.
- The task was to get more women aged 14_40 exercising regularly
- Research done by Sports England Active People Survey
- Agency FCB Inferno needed real women what they thought of each response
- Gathering lots of information, they looked at what was common across demographics: fear of judgement
- Focus groups at this point to analyse this response, which was positive
- Wanted to know whether people engaged: “Sport England didn’t just want to know how many of a focus group liked it, they wanted to know the semantics of it, what words they were using, how they expressed they liked it. They didn’t want their research just regurgitated back to them.” DandAD
- Ability to empathise with women they were aiming it at
- Relatable women – chased down people outside sports centres to get as much variety in the people involved – Personas
- Although they wanted to show the barrier they wanted to show people overcoming them
- Feedback from the hashtag allowed them to see what women thought
- In the past five years, the campaign has helped more than 500,000 women and girls to become more physically active. Guardian
- Sports England continue to survey and found that women are still afraid of what people think of them and that they are worried about speaking out about things such as periods and menopause that affect their activity levels
- Women not told they have to exercise, they are shown ways in which they can overcome, and the positivity it can bring
- Research affected creative decisions: “It found, for instance, that using photographs of women in the context of the activity rather than actually doing it was more effective in promoting it.” Guardian
- 2015 Missy Elliot, I jiggle therefore I am, sweating like a pig feeling like a fox, I kick balls, deal with it, same right I look hot
- 2017, campaign narrative phenomenal women 1978, Maya Angelou, Women Phenonmally – emphases womanhood, mother, grandmother, up the generations. In everyday situations, a wider range. “Unleash your inner beginner’ and ‘Take me as I am or watch me as I go’. The mantras are based on research from a survey of 200,000 people that highlighted common worries such as not being good enough, or overcoming stereotypes about what women should or shouldn’t do.” The Drum “addresses the mental hurdles which people feel when returning to exercise after taking a break, which often makes the idea of exercising all the more daunting.”
- 2020, Me Again,
Write a 300 – 400-word description with screen grabs to illustrate your research findings.
Sports England identified in their biannual survey of 2014 that women were far less likely than men to engage in regular exercise, even though 75% aged 14–40 said that they wanted to exercise more. The campaign This Girl Can was underpinned by five years of research, conducted in a random sampling of households across England with around 175,000 people completing each survey. Each local authority had a minimum sample size of 500 people, to ensure that the results reflect the English population.
With Sports England, agency FCB Inferno conceived a campaign that aimed to get more women exercising. The survey had given them metrics about why women weren’t exercising, however, they thought that women would not respond well to being told that they should exercise and so they began to GENERATE HYPOTHESISES. Across different demographics, they found a common theme: fear of judgement; that their bodies or skills at sport would be judged. Later focus groups responded that this was true. They dug deeper because Sports England “wanted to know the semantics of it, what words they were using, how they expressed they liked it. They didn’t want their research just regurgitated back to them” DandAD and wrote OBSERVATION NOTES of their focus group feedback.
To find women that people would relate to, FCB Inferno approached people outside sports centres to learn about the barriers that they overcame to be there, because they felt that it wasn’t only about showing the difficulties that women face to get into sports, but how women overcame them. From these experiences, they built PERSONAS that felt true to life.
The first campaign in 2015 featured taglines like, “I jiggle therefore I am”, “Sweating like a pig feeling like a fox”, “I kick balls, deal with it” and “Damn right, I look hot” that emphasised the features of women’s bodies and what women were afraid of when exercising. The hashtag #thisgirlcan meant that Sports England and FCB Inferno could get direct feedback and SUCCESS METRICS, and the tag went viral in the days after the release.
The feedback was really positive but some felt that using “girl” was demeaning to older women. In 2017 they released a new campaign that built on the success of the previous one but addressed the criticism. They emphasised the everyday act of exercising with a broader range of women, with Maya Angelou reading her Phenomenal Women poem in the advert. From more research, they created mantras such as “Unleash your inner beginner” and ‘Take me as I am or watch me as I go” that highlighted common worries such as not being good enough, or overcoming stereotypes about what women should or shouldn’t do, as well as why women start and stop exercise.
In 2020, the campaign released a new advert that centres on the defiance of the women who have had to overcome societal barriers to get active. They used real people that their personas would relate to: a woman with three children who struggled to find time to exercise, a woman with painful periods who felt this stopped her from exercising and a woman whose menopause made her feel the same. The film did not shy away from issues that women feel, and affect their exercise but do not feel they can talk about, and brought them to light so that women can start talking about menopause, about periods and about family. The advert showed these women getting back into exercise with the support of their friends, family and community to show that we can all be part of the solution.
The advert reached over a million views online before it went on air and entirely through digital word of mouth.
Over the past five years This Girl Can has inspired nearly three million women to get more active, and over the next year aims to get 250,000 more. From 2015, the campaign has developed from a set of survey results to continue listening to what people have to say about why they wanted to get more active and what was stopping them. By centring on the women they wanted to inspire have built a successful and engaging campaign.
Anna Robinette 