Exploring New Business Opportunities through Human-Centered Design

Over the 14-week project, we took a unique, entrepreneurial startup approach by prototyping a business to pitch, rather than a common client-consultant or project sponsorship collaboration. The goal was to build scalable ideas that can move to the development phase with companies and regulatory agencies.

The initial challenge

People fail to make healthy nutrition choices due to today’s fast-paced life and disruptive routines. How might we help people make healthier choices by making the nutrition information more accessible?

Our approach

Our concept is driven by what we found in the market, what we learned from talking to people about how they manage their health currently/the pivotal role nutrition plays in that, and from experts. We started by casting a wide net to better understand the spectrum of healthiness and the role nutrition plays in someone’s personal health philosophy. We conducted several interviews, shop along observations and a competitive analysis.

Working through 3 Lenses:
Desirability, Feasibility, Viability

To better define the scope of the end outcome, we took a design-led approach, as well as diving in technologies and business viabilities in our whole process, from research in the very beginning all the way through the prototyping phase.

desirability

Design by understanding what people want and their unarticulated needs

feasibility

Research on emerging technologies and prototype the key intervention from the technological standpoint

viability

Understand the market and create the practical business roadmap

UNDERSTANDING THE LANDSCAPE

We conducted research on market trends and where existing companies and organizations play in the field, as well as the available enabling technologies we could potentially utilize.

DEFINING TARGET AUDIENCE

Through our discovery research of the overall context and different people, we found that people often fail to make healthy nutrition choices when they are in a busy schedule. We identified “busy people” as our target audience.

We then identified consultants as our “busy people“ market niche to play in. They are the early adopters of our new business services. This has really helped us better adjust our research and find practical, strategic directions.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

From the insights we learned, we reframed the five design principles that provided actionable direction for the final concepts.

How might we create a platform that enables people with busy schedules to make healthy decisions that are aligned with their personal nutritional philosophies?

Introducing NutraPath

NutraPath a platform that enables people with busy schedules to make healthy decisions that are aligned with their personal nutritional philosophies.

Contextual prototyping

Simulate context and demonstrate the experience through role-playing

Lo-fi, iterative prototyping

Test possible interventions with users (consultants)

Machine learning prototyping

Design from the feasibility aspect: create the ML algorithm with technical guidance.

Personal Reflection

Bottom-up design approach. With the opportunity vaguely identified, we took an atypical, bottom-up startup approach to the innovation challenge, rather than the design consulting way that we normally did. I really appreciated the exposure to this approach, tackling the innovation challenge in a more flexible way.

Kudos to teamwork. The success of the project couldn’t live without the great teamwork. We co-managed the project based on each of our teammates’ work style, and utilized each of our strengths. As a multidisciplinary team (design, research and business), we all brought our perspectives and different thinking modes to the teamwork, keeping each other on the ground and making progress.

Being the dot-connector in the team. Even though we didn’t specify roles, as the most senior member in the team, I was always the one connecting the dots in this project, bringing in methods I had used in the past, suggesting directional and output structures and bringing together the narratives.