My client, a leading health management services company incorporating monitoring devices, disease management and wellness services, hired me to undertake a design research project to better understand what it is that individuals do to get and stay healthy. The next phase of the project is to use the outcome of our research and then map how the organization’s products and services support people or not.

Working with Adaptive Path co-founder and author Indi Young and her team we undertook a design research project using the methodology outlined in Indi’s book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior. Interviews were conducted of individuals across the country to understand their behavior, motivation, philosophy and emotion around doing things (or not doings things) to get and stay healthy.

These mental spaces of what a person is doing, thinking and feeling while they are trying to accomplish something around their health and well-being led to the building of a mental model diagram of over 1,000 tasks, beliefs, and motivations. The example above shows just a few of the mental spaces uncovered including what people do to practice healthier eating habits, motivate themselves and struggle to stay on track.