Activating Auckland
Developing new services to reach under-represented clients who struggle to get active.
Auckland Pools and Leisure, a service organisation within the Auckland Council, wanted to both grow its market and honour its responsibility to serve the needs of all Aucklanders. Early investigation into people who were not present in fitness centres identified high levels of motivation but strong barriers to participation and this became the focus of a four month research and design project, as well as follow up projects to re-create the membership model and design first interactions with the target audience in fitness centres.
We met and talked to men and women in their homes and workplaces, observed receptionist and trainer interactions in gyms, tested user stories with a wide range of staff to generate further insight, synthesised and mapped insights to build system wide perspectives and user empathy, ran an ideation series to develop a core set of concepts from over 100 candidate ideas, and planned how to implement and measure the concepts including key assumptions to test.
More recently I conducted research to validate options in a new membership structure. The research informed a financial model that ran scenarios to assess risk in adopting changes to membership and pricing. It was also used to design an introductory experience for customers, involving a plan of the service flow and a detailed prototype of new web pages.
The latest effort included the design of conversation prompts, to make sure that new customers got the assistance they needed. The prompts drew on behavioural insights from the initial research and enabled customers to “triage” themselves when presenting for the first time, using game-like components. I backed up this work by applying behavioural economics (psychology) to formulate guidelines for communications that assist behavioural change.
Project components:
Independent project: Max Adler Ltd. Collaborators: Lauren Hyland, Anna Han
Client: Pools and Leisure, Auckland Council
2015-17
Auckland Pools and Leisure, a service organisation within the Auckland Council, wanted to both grow its market and honour its responsibility to serve the needs of all Aucklanders. Early investigation into people who were not present in fitness centres identified high levels of motivation but strong barriers to participation and this became the focus of a four month research and design project, as well as follow up projects to re-create the membership model and design first interactions with the target audience in fitness centres.
We met and talked to men and women in their homes and workplaces, observed receptionist and trainer interactions in gyms, tested user stories with a wide range of staff to generate further insight, synthesised and mapped insights to build system wide perspectives and user empathy, ran an ideation series to develop a core set of concepts from over 100 candidate ideas, and planned how to implement and measure the concepts including key assumptions to test.
More recently I conducted research to validate options in a new membership structure. The research informed a financial model that ran scenarios to assess risk in adopting changes to membership and pricing. It was also used to design an introductory experience for customers, involving a plan of the service flow and a detailed prototype of new web pages.
The latest effort included the design of conversation prompts, to make sure that new customers got the assistance they needed. The prompts drew on behavioural insights from the initial research and enabled customers to “triage” themselves when presenting for the first time, using game-like components. I backed up this work by applying behavioural economics (psychology) to formulate guidelines for communications that assist behavioural change.
Project components:
- Literature review: participation in physical activity and fitness (NZ, UK)
- In-context User Research: 35 individuals
- User Types: also presented as persona story canvasses
- Experience Mapping: development journeys of different user types with key behavioural factors
- Systems Mapping: relationships between entities and factors in users’ wider service system
- Concept Catalogue: 109 ideas, themed and anchored into core concepts
- Future Scenarios: post-intervention user journeys to imagine the service change
- Online Survey to test qualitative insights and explore willingness to pay: 1500 complete responses
- Trial Designs: new service outlines including scope, benefits analysis, assumptions to test, and how to run the trials
- Prototypes: web pages, conversation guides, self-assessment tools
- Design Criteria: communications guidelines to assist behavioural change based on behavioural psychology
Independent project: Max Adler Ltd. Collaborators: Lauren Hyland, Anna Han
Client: Pools and Leisure, Auckland Council
2015-17
Expand the image to see some of the outputs of the research, as well as tools designed for new customers tell their story and find the right assistance.