Older Adults' Well-being: Service Design & Business Pitch
Problem
How might we support older adults through an innovative service concept?
Approach
I designed a service that improves the well-being of adults aged 50 and over. I created the service concept, medium fidelity wireframes, and pitch in 7.5 weeks.
Result
Pitch approved by CTO of multi-national company for further investment.
Design Approach
As the lead designer, I partnered with a user researcher (Evan) and our client (Masa). Masa came to us with a broad vision, nominal budget, strict due date and desire to learn the human-centered design process.
A broad vision would make developing “pixel-perfect” mocks in seven weeks difficult, so I convinced him to rescope the effort to a UX vision and business case — validated through user feedback and supported by system thinking.
He had a presentation in 7.5 weeks with his CTO of his multinational consumer electronics company and a leading Silicon Valley VC firm.
Note: Because of the proprietary nature of this work, details below will be limited.
| Week | Project Activities |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Onboarding |
| Week 2 | Discovery Interviews |
| Week 3 | Discovery Interview Analysis and Ideation Workshop Planning |
| Week 4 | Ideation Workshop and Idea Prioritization |
| Week 5 | Concept Interviews and Interview Analysis |
| Week 6 | Concept Refinement, Concept Testing, Concept Iteration and Pitch Prototyping |
| Week 7 | Usability Testing, Testing Analysis, Design Refinement and Pitch Design |
| Week 8 (3 days) | Pitch Design Finalized, Pitch Preparation/Practice |
Project Plan
With Masa’s buy-in, I designed a schedule grounded in an agile, human-centered design process that allowed for his deep involvement.
Client
Global consumer electronics company
Duration
7.5 weeks (Jan.-Mar. 2017)
Role
Lead Product Designer, Design Strategist
Team
1 User Researcher
How might we design a mutually supportive community for active older adults (aged 50 and over)?
Ideation Workshop
Masa left the workshop invigorated and very satisfied by the group’s excitement and ideas.
After the initial round of qualitative research, I planned an ideation workshop to take advantage of the creativity of the consultancy’s staff and engage the client in a deep and structured way.
Evan and I co-facilitated the workshop; he presented social trends and facilitated discussion on the research findings, while I guided ”How might we” brainstorming, prototyping and concept discussion.
Prototyping Entry Touchpoints
I led our team through the process of comparing each idea’s innovation, match to user needs, and implementation effort based on client expertise/technologies to eliminate ideas that didn’t meet our goals.
From that comparison, we identified 6 service concepts that could contribute to company-wide innovation.
As Evan prepared our next round of concept testing, I created a series of Facebook ads (a common entry point for our target users) to solicit reactions to our value propositions and positioning.
Prototyping Concepts
Our concept testing resulted in the elimination of several ideas — potential users were direct and gave clear signal. We now had 2 unique service concepts.
Split on which concept to present, I created medium-fidelity concepts with realistic content for usability testing and team review.
While Evan executed the usability testing with my medium-fidelity Balsamiq prototypes, I developed a paper prototype of the pitch deck.
⚾️ Final Pitches & Results
Forunately (and unfortunately?), usability testing revealed each idea to have promise and no obvious reasons to take out of the running.
Masa decided we should present both ideas. I continued leading the pitch development and we held daily reviews. I designed the presentation structure, layout and content on user needs, business opportunities, value propositions, competitor analysis and rollout plans.
Masa made a “game time decision” to present only one idea to his company’s CTO and a leading silicon valley VC firm.
Masa was given approval to make a formal funding request to continue inventing towards a US launch.