2010-2011 National Science Council Concept Design of Future Products Project
As the advancement of medical technology, the trends in healthcare have gradually expanded from medical treatment to holistic healthcare for people, in other words, wellness. However, what wellness services are needed? How are they implemented and delivered to users? Questions like these are important and worth to be explored.
The design project was carried out in three phases. Phase one aims to investigate the wellness issue and needs which were concern by the users, users expectations for wellness lifestyle were explored; phase two aims to transforming the finding in phase one into a wellness service platform consisting of wellness products; phase three aims to construct a reality wellness service platform, and evaluate the feedback and interaction between the users and the system.
The main issue of this design project is to provide a socialization wellness service to users. The design concepts and findings in this project promote social participation, strengthen social bonds, and meet the wellness needs of the users. This wellness service platform can help us to integrate diversity of wellness service resources, and it provides a transparent wellness service interface that users can easy to use it, and in return, to promote social innovation, and sustainability to bring progress and hope for the environment and the society.
Oct 2010 - Jun 2011
Research
Concept Development
Product Design
Story Board
National Science Council
The research team began the research by interviewing three participants in different ages and occupations about 6 existing products and services in order to understand their values through their opinion on attributes of products/ services.
The team showed 6 storyboards of products/ services to help interviewees know how they work, and then interviewees were asked to pick the attributes of products/ services they like or unlike most and tell researchers the reasons. Later, the researchers analyzed reasons interviewees mentioned and produced ACV (Attribute, Consequence, Value) diagrams.
In order to create a deeper understanding of users’ wellness behaviors, the design probe was designed to collect information about wellness and life style from users. The users had to record their daily lives regarding wellness, such as what they ate, what kinds of exercises they preferred, how they got information about wellness, where they went to do exercise, and whom they met while exercising within a week.
The data collected from the workbooks was built into work models, flow model, sequence model, artifact model and culture model ,to help visualize the users’ behaviors and activities and identify the difficulties they met easily.
We identified two personas based on the information we collected which shows particular user types, needs and preferences after research.
Kuan-Ren Zhang is an office worker who attends an badminton club and loves to play badminton with friends and colleagues. He is a professional player, so he is particular about the environment he plays in. He wants to have some skillful players who can practice with him.
Yun-Xi Jiang is an office lady who is fascinated by enjoying delicacies and strives for controlling her weight as well as body shape.
1. Enhance users' trust in wellness information the service system provides.
2. Provide personalized and customized service and fit well-ness information into users' daily lives.
3. Give users the social incentives to maintain their exercise habit.
4. Give users feedback in different phases to help them achieve their goals gradually.
5. Provide the service which matches users' self-image or social value.
Two brainstorming workshop were held for collecting information and directly feedback about some design ideas from users. We invited users, including students and workers aged from 25-30.
We prepared some interesting questions regarding our topic, wellness and asked all participants, designers and users, to think and propose the solutions of those issues. Also, lots of references consisting of various pictures with different themes, people, places, and objects analyzed results of the previous research were provided for the participants to apply and address their thoughts.
After the workshops, we use Affinity Diagram to converge those ideas in order to develop initial concepts.
After the workshops of brainstorming, 6 initial concepts were generated. The 6 initial concepts, The Wellness Magic Mirror, My Personal Coach, Excercise 2Gether, Healthy Spots, The Home Doctor, and Exercise Events for All, were proposed through storyboards.
We provide a service for office workers to make good use of time to exercise during weekdays, it allows them to encourage each other to have good exercising habits. On weekends, we provide different kind of exercising party for people to have fun together, they can meet new friends and exercise with their colleagues. With this exercising party, exercise is no longer boring and they will looking forward to the coming of happy exercising weekend.
My wellness magazine is a customized magazine based on uses’ health situation and living territory. It provide abundant personal health information which most relevant to the user. According to needs and preferences of different users, My wellness magazine will organize or reports various activities allow user to actually participate in. Therefore creating more healthy interaction and social gatherings, so that users no longer feel alienated and the city apathy, every day lived up to the ideal of healthy living.
Healthy Diner is a service that provides diet suggestions for people and helps them keep track of their daily diet. Through the membership cards, people can easily record their diet at our cooperative restaurants, the service system will provide suitable ordering recommendations after analyzed their diet records and their physical situations. People can also select the customized meals or diet-related health programs at our service station. Through these dietary related activities, people can easily have their personal nutrition control.