Community Change

South L.A. + Food Deserts

Background

Fall 2017, I had the opportunity to be part of a four member group for my community change class. The objective was help to the American Heart Association research and deliver "health and food desserts."

AJ Mody - Project Lead (Project Manager & Coordinator, Design Strategy)
Mike Sonnenberg - Field Researcher (UX Research, ideation, and Prototyping)
Ana Massette - Field Researcher & Presenter (UX Research, ideation, Prototyping)
Ojen Shammasian - Field Researcher, Process Documenter (UX Research & Design Strategy)

Softwares: Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, FIGMA, and Google Docs
Instructor: Nicole Chan

The Problem

American Heart Association present us a compelling presentation on how healthy eating will help future citizens and generations to come prevent health issues like diabetes, obesity, and cholesterol. In particular, South LA, is extremely unhealthy with limited grocery stores. 

Strategy

The task at hand was to investigate and discover what may be the reason for South L.A. being a food desert. The American Heart Association may utilize our findings to help identify the roles we can play in existing collective impact work and develop new community based projects programs, projects, and better health education materials. The insights we extract will help change habits and behaviors to open up to create a healthier community. 

Our brief was guided by Verynice, a global design strategy consultancy that ignites movement, builds brands, and change perspectives. We were asked to follow their design research toolkit which was a specific toolkit design just for the American Heart Association brief. 

Research Prep

Then we had to look at some factors about South L.A.:

• Lack of knowledge of the impact of unhealthy foods

• Grocery prices and income

• Store and Farmer's Market locations

This followed a group discussions about the community's norms, traditions, and characteristics.

• Social influences

• More fast food and less grocery stores around

• Absence of financial and emotional help

Concluding up to ask, do they even care? Or what does healthy mean to the community of South L.A.?

In preparations to understand the community, who can we ask for insights and will it be relevant enough? We realized focusing on people who made a healthier lifestyle choice would give us a good kick start to unravel their motivations against those who do not choose a more healthier lifestyle. Then we asked ourselves why is the community such a food desert.

Leading us to look for answers for the following questions in order to learn about the community to inspire us for a design solution.

• What does a person who lives in South L.A. day's look like?

• Do they think about the future?

• Their motivations and what might change mean to them?

Secondary Data Research

Before starting observations, we dabbed into secondary data. We compared census reports from South Central with another city, Santa Monica that doesn't lack food deserts. We also looked at the leading causes of death in California 2015 from the American Heart Association, it is determined that the number one disease that kills Californians is heart disease.

Our secondary research led us to the following questions.

What do people in what South LA do for work/money and how long are they working for? (more about their environment / goals)

How many know someone within their immediate circle that has been affected?

Why do they think it’s happening and how do they feel about it, does affect their habits? (do they accept that as normal?)

Observational Research

We did two different visits on two different days. The first day driving around and just taking it all in and observing the environment of the community. 

• Dead community

• Lack of well-known stores like Whole Foods

• People are afraid to go out and they mostly stay in their homes, causing them to be unsocial in their own community

The second time around, we visited the Old South L.A. farm site and a few mini markets.

The Old South LA farm site has been abandoned. Where originally citizens of the community were arrested for trying to protect their farm but it was sold and neglected by its current owner. 

It appears the mini markets do sell fruits and vegetables, forcing us to question how are people making their choices if there are healthy options and how are they cooking at home?

Community Research

Trying to talk to people on the streets gave us some challenges like people were unwilling to hold a conversation. Although we were able to interview two people, revealing that people do understand what being healthy is. Also, these two interviewees understand what part of their lives are healthy/unhealthy and how to maintain healthy. 

We also reached out to a residents we knew in South L.A. Our approach was to narrow down to one or two specific questions. Along with trying different research interview methods such as creating an interactive interview and getting a participant to food journal to gain more insights.

The few interview questions were:

• How do you define "being healthy?" Why?

• What part of your life do you think are healthy/unhealthy? Why?

Food journaling Research

• Keeping track of what they eat throughout the day

• Recording methods of videos, photos, or written, etc. Any time they eat anything, buy food, sudden thoughts of food or eating, something they wish they had.

The interactive interview was going to be a set up in the community to attract people. The strategy was to have people giving 5 minutes of their time for $1 to participate in choosing eatable items. After their interaction we would ask them questions on their choices/behavior; $1 would have been given for their 5 minutes, unfortunately because of time constraints this research strategy wasn't doable.

Insights & Synthesis from all Research

All this researched information needed to be synthesized for discovery of a healthier community in South L.A. We transferred our information onto sticky notes and rested our eyes for a few minutes and developed the following categories with each of their pros and cons..

Insights:

• A lot of people know or perceive what “healthy” & “unhealthy” is but dont act on the knowledge, because environment and culture influence strong barriers or influences.

• Even if someone has the info or access to helpful programs to stay healthy they don’t because it can contradict cultural traditions.

• People eat more fast food, why? because theres not enough healthy stuff.

Patterns:

• Interviewees refrained talking about the negatives or demotivational aspects.

• Biggest health inhibitors was culture + environment.

• South LA residents can think positively about habits & perceptions of what healthy is.

This followed some "Ho might we'?" via FIGMA tools.

How might we make food journaling really easy?
How might we create a snapshot of what people are eating daily Community?
How might we use their existing knowledge into the realm of action?
How might we make food journaling more interactive?

Prototype

Because the gathered research and inside we gained, we asked ourselves how might we create a snapshot of what people are eating daily and how might we use for their existing knowledge into the realm of their actions?

We also noticed how successful the food journaling was, I started asking ourselves how might we make food journaling really easy and more Interactive?

The led us to the following prototype idea: A pure social media network aiming at food journaling content. Instagram page for stomach (anonymous food journaling)

In order to see if this prototype would work we would have to gather participants. Participants would take a look at one healthy and one unhealthy food journaling social media site and ask them revelant ant questions.

• What are your thoughts and how they feel looking at these two different journaling feeds?

• Would they think it would be beneficial for them to actively create and keep one?

• What kind of reflection might they have looking back on their journaling feeds?

How would we spread the word around on food journaling? Creating a flyer that would advertise "Rewards for Food Diary, Sign Up Now!" The fylyer ultimately become our prototype to see if people had any interest in the idea of food journaling.

Unfortunately, within the time constraints we had nobody had responded to take part.

Conclusion

How may we apply what we know from UX and other design toolkits to create meaningful and useful services/products? Here’s my take, from my work on South LA Food Deserts.:

• Listen: Always listen and digest, it's only when we carefully listen that drives us deep into projects.

• Observe: We must gain deeper insight by investigating and uncovering the what, why, and how? Doing this will help us create better research methods for our primary users, because we have eliminated redundancy.

• Evaluate: Insights and synthesis should have depth and focus in order to generate efficient and impactful changes in people's lives.

• Prototype: A prototype may not be the solution, but the very first step in gaining insights and revelant research to understand people and their needs and wants for a better service/product.

Role in the group

• Assist in the user interview process to dig deeper into user goals, pain points, and current workflows

• Work with team to prioritize develop project, features, and plans/timelines.

• Work collaboratively with team members to solve problems and iterate on solutions

• Manage a process blog twice a week for eight weeks.

Read the full process blog:  Operation AHA