Our group is focusing on increasing recreational time spent outdoors. We were able to synthesize information from our 5-day baseline study to develop an intervention study. Below, we have our synthesis process.
Provision Personas + Journey Maps
We interviewed 5 participants for our baseline study. From these interviews we developed two provisional personas and their journey maps.
Full-time college students or employees in tech industries are easily overwhelmed by their daily tasks and do not have enough nudge to spend time outdoors and to cheer themselves up.
We believe that engaging in more outdoor activities could provide multiple benefits to both working class and full-time college students. First, it presents an opportunity to engage in physical activity and improve their overall health. This can help reduce stress and improve their physical well-being, leading to better overall health and improved academic/working performance. In addition, outdoor activities involve teamwork and collaboration, which can help students build important social skills and improve their ability to work and communicate with others. Therefore, we set the full-time students and working class as the target group of our intervention study. They might get overwhelmed by their daily work, thus a small pushing notification might make a huge difference in their outdoor activities.
Since the full-time working class might have more constraints such as family time, unexpected working conditions and other unmanageable cases to deal with, they might not be able to fully commit to our study. In addition, we also do not have enough connections with the working class. Therefore, we decided to target full-time college students in our pilot intervention study . We interviewed 5 participants for our baseline study, and from these interviews we developed two representative personas and their journey maps.
Full-Time Student with a Full-Time Job
This full-time student with a full-time job embodies the individual with a rigid schedule and little free-time in between responsibilities. With such a busy schedule, he is not very social and prefers spending time alone to recharge. He has a goal to spend more time outside so that he can reflect on his day and appreciate life. With a predetermined schedule, this individual can utilize it to find times to commit to spending outside.
A common trend that we noticed with this persona is the inverse relationship between his motivation to go outside and the number of hours he spends working in a day. As seen in the journey map, we noticed that on days when he is at his job for 10 or more hours, his motivation decreases compared to the days he has school. We also noticed that he only went outside when a spontaneous opportunity arose.
Gregarious Greg
Gregarious Greg is the social individual who associates the outdoors with good company. University students make up a large portion of our target audience, and for many of them, the opportunity to connect with others is a key motivator in spending valuable time outside. In fact, a common sentiment among many of the participants was that being outside with others was more motivating due to the social obligation of following through with plans, making Gregarious Greg a very fitting persona to capture the young adult’s need for social connection.
A common trend that we observed from the synthesis of our baseline study was the association between the outdoors, friends, food, and walks. As outlined in the journey map, the majority of our participants were often seen outside when getting meals with friends or when walking around campus to prolong the time they spend together. However, while there appears to be a highly relevant social component to spending recreational time outdoors, there are also obstacles such as schedule coordination and differences in outdoor activity interests that pose difficulty for a Gregarious Greg to go outside. By creating this journey map, we were able to identify themes of social accountability and mealtimes as being an opportune time for potential intervention to get people outside.
Journey Map
For our journey map, we developed one journey map for each of our chosen two personas ,Full-Time Student with a Full-Time Job and Gregarious Greg. As seen below, we split our journey map into different parts of the day: morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and evening. We chose these parts of the day based on our interviews and how our personas’ schedules seemed to be divided up.
For each part of the day, we describe Action (what they do during that time), Think/Feel (what they describe thinking or feeling then), Motivation (to go outside for the day), Location (where they typically are), and Pain Points (what usually prevents them from going outside).
There are some slight differences between the full-time student with a Full-Time Job and Gregarious Greg. For example, the full-time student spends time in the gym, which could be a substitute for going outside, while Greg is willing to spend more time with friends either after class or in the dining hall. But we do see they share a couple of key insights. First, we noticed that people’s motivation to go outside is highest in the early afternoon. This is helpful for determining when an intervention might be most useful. We also noticed that people tend to transition between the four parts of the day. They either change what they are doing or where they are. We thought that nudging users during this transitionary period would help them take a short break before moving on to the next part of their day. Lastly, we noticed that weather is a common pain point. Bad weather (as the user defines it) can deter someone from going outside, so we should intervene when the weather is at its best.
Affinity Map and Frequency Map
Affinity Map
Extracting from our primary and secondary research, we were able to group up key insights into larger themes, with many falling under categories involving time, weather, social factors, and wellbeing. Time and weather were found to be the greatest factors that impacted whether or not participants went outside. Through clustering, we were also able to identify how common it is for people’s outdoor times to be spent with other individuals, and we could determine that emotional and physical wellbeing were common motivators and outcomes from going outside.
Frequency Map
By categorizing our findings into themes based on frequency, it was insightful to visualize just how often certain themes were mentioned or experienced by our participants. Wellbeing was mentioned most often in the primary and secondary research as being the main motivation for going outside, which helps us establish wellbeing as a main motive for inciting behavior change. Social motivation and outdoor company were also commonly addressed, indicating that social accountability could be a strong intervention idea for our next steps. Finally, time and weather were labeled as the strongest deterrents and encouragements for participants’ decisions to spend time outside, inspiring many intervention possibilities based on those correlations.
Models
Mind Map
When synthesizing data from our baseline study, we found there were three factors that most strongly influenced our participants and how frequently they went outside: Time, Weather, and Social factors. Time and weather most strongly influenced motivation, and social factors impacted the intensity of the positive impact of going outside. We were able to come up with opportunities for intervention based on these areas, for example specifically timed nudges or weather based reminders to go outside (these two ideas did in fact make our intervention study plan). Social factors are the most difficult to capitalize on as creating a social aspect to a product is very difficult and brings in a large set of challenges.
Feedback Loop
When the subject feels more energetic, they would spend more time outdoors even if on a busy workday. They are willing to take some detours to enjoy the outside world. However, if they feel tired already, they tend to stay indoors more often. That would shut down the positive feedback between feeling and wanting to go outside.
Looking back on our prompt intervention, we are trying to remind the participants that the weather is good, and the animals are cute. That could cheer up the participants and remind them to go outside.
Intervention/Product Ideation
After developing our personas, corresponding journey maps, and comparative analysis, we used a few key insights to develop the following (initial) three ideas for an intervention.
Good Weather Alert
After developing our personas and corresponding journey maps, we learned that some people, such as Gregarious Greg, consider connecting with people a key motivator for going outside. People like Gregarious Greg enjoy using time spent outside as a time to also be social. They find it difficult to schedule time to meet with friends, and so this can be an obstacle to going outside. From this key insight, we had the idea to develop a mobile app that acts as a group walk organizer. This app would schedule times in the day when groups of people can meet outside at a designated location and go on a walk. Users would then be notified when group walks were happening and if any of their friends were there. This app would provide users with an opportunity to socialize when outside and, therefore, meet the needs of social people like Gregarious Greg. We identified the following pros and cons for this idea:
Pros:
- Provides an opportunity to meet new people and/or friends in an outdoor setting
- Combines a social activity and an outdoor activity
- Users have multiple opportunities throughout the day to choose from
- Alleviates the burden of scheduling from the user
Cons:
- Cannot get large groups of people to consistently commit
- Ineffective if not enough people join
- Does not consider different accessibility needs
- Difficult to find the optimal time to schedule these walks
Group Walk Organizer
From our personas and corresponding journey maps, we also learned that bad weather is a common reason for not going outside. In our baseline study, every participant listed bad weather as a deterrent. However, participants’ definitions of “bad weather” varied. Some described bad weather as hot, sunny days. Others described it as cold, cloudy days. We figured that we could address this deterrent with an app that alerts users when it is their preferred weather outside. Users would input their preferred type of weather and enable location services. The app would then send an alert to go outside when the weather is optimal. We identified the following pros and cons for this idea:
Pros:
- Tackles one of the biggest deterrents for going outside
- Little to no effort required from the user
Cons:
- Weather forecasts are not always reliable
- Weeks could go by before a user’s preferred weather appears
- Does not encourage users to go outside for long periods of time
- Notifications can easily become redundant
Scavenger Hunt
From our comparative analysis, we found that Pokémon GO is the most successful app at getting users outside. Its virality and 71 million active users are evidence for its success. We think that its success can be partially attributed to its unique game experience that involves searching for Pokémon. Therefore, gamification that includes exploring to find hidden items seems very effective at getting people outside. From this, we had the idea to develop a mobile app centered around a scavenger hunt. We identified the following pros and cons for this idea:
Pros:
- Scavenger hunts make going outside fun and keep users entertained
- Scavenger hunts provide an opportunity to explore surrounding areas
- Finding a new item is a reward, and rewards can increase behavior
- Keeps users outside for longer periods of time since they must search for items
Cons:
- Users can quickly lose appeal in a scavenger hunt once they are no longer entertained
- Scavenger hunts require coming up with new items to find, each appealing in its own way
- Defining the radius for a scavenger hunt can be difficult and must be accessible to a wide range of audiences
- Not everyone enjoys scavenger hunts
- Scavenger hunts require a high amount of effort from the user.
We also came up with other ideas based on findings from our baseline studies, literature review, and comparative analysis. We plotted all of our ideas onto the following brainstorm axis. One axis represents the amount of effort required by the user, and the other axis represents the amount of time users would spend outside.
After discussing the above three ideas and placing them on the brainstorm axis, we decided to combine them into one app. We did this because we wanted our intervention idea to include all three key insights.
We liked the idea of gamifying going outside through a scavenger hunt, but we agreed that scavenger hunts require a large amount of effort from the user and can cause users to lose interest. And so, we shifted towards daily challenges. These challenges would give users a task to complete each day, and these tasks must be completed outside. Instead of rewarding users with a found item, users would feel intrinsically rewarded by having completed a challenge.
With an intrinsic reward established, we wanted to remind users of their achievements– through photos! Users will take photos of their completed challenges, and we will send them weekly recaps in the form of a photo collage. We came to this idea after considering apps like Spotify. At the end of each year, Spotify gives users a yearly recap of their most listened-to songs, known as Spotify Wrapped. We have noticed that users enjoy sharing these recaps on platforms like Instagram. While Spotify is not an inherently social app, the yearly recap has become a yearly social tradition on social media. Friends can share their favorite songs / artists and compare their music interests. Some users have even stated that they use Spotify instead of Apple Music so that they can receive this yearly recap. Considering the success of Spotify Wrapped, we decided to include a recap of our own. Our intervention study is only 5 days long, so we chose a weekly recap instead. Including this recap will allow for the social component that some users like Gregarious Greg want from outdoor experiences.
We also wanted to address the bad weather issue. However, since we identified potential long periods of bad weather as a con for this idea, we decided to expand on this feature. In addition to good weather alerts, users will also be notified when it is sunset. Some participants in our baseline study expressed that sunset is their favorite time of day, so sunsets seemed like a good choice for an extra alert to offset long periods of bad weather.
Intervention Study
Using key insights from our journey map, affinity map, frequency map, and models, we developed the following intervention study. Since we found that weather is a common deterrent and motivator for going outside, we included nudges to go outside when the weather met the participant’s preferred conditions.
We also used the finding that people have transition points in their day. We asked participants for their schedules before the study so that we could identify break / transition periods during which we would send prompts.
From our frequency map and second proto-persona, we found that social accountability motivated people to get outside. By choosing to individually text participants, they were influenced to abide by social etiquette and respond to us when they completed challenges and, therefore, went outside.
Lastly, we decided to send daily prompts during the early afternoon since our journey map revealed it is when motivation to go outside peaks.
Intervention Study Description:
For our intervention study, we used text message prompts and daily challenges to encourage participants to go outside. Each team member communicated with one participant over text. Before the study began, we asked participants for their schedules so that we could determine when they have breaks throughout each day. We also asked participants what their favorite kind of weather is.
At the end of each day, we sent participants a survey to describe their experiences going outside. In terms of data, we measured how they felt before and after challenges, how motivated they felt to go outside, and how effective the texts were in getting them outside.
At the end of the week, we sent participants a compilation of their photos from the week.
The structure of each day was as follows:
- In the morning (before 10am), the following message was sent to the user:
- “Good morning! Welcome to Day 1. Your challenge for the day is to take a picture of a bird that you see.”
- “Good morning! Welcome to Day 2. Your challenge for the day is to take a picture of a flower that you see outside.”
- “Good morning! Welcome to Day 3. Your challenge for the day is to take a picture of a tree that you find beautiful.”
- “Good morning! Welcome to Day 4. Your challenge for the day is to take a picture of an animal that you see outside.”
- “Good morning! Welcome to Day 5. Your challenge for the day is to take a picture of a building that you find beautiful.”
- In the early afternoon (between 12-2pm) or late afternoon during a break that the participant has, the following text message was sent:
- “Hello! It seems like you have a break right about now. Try going outside to eat lunch or taking a walk nearby. Maybe you’ll complete today’s challenge while you’re out!”
The following texts were also sent, but alternated based on the day and were only sent when conditions aligned:
- If and when the weather out is the participant’s favorite, the following text message is sent:
- “Looks like it’s sunny outside! Take this opportunity to go outside :)”
- During sunset:
- “The sun is setting and it looks beautiful! Go take a look :)”
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