Tasked with the challenge to address some area of inequity in the food system, I set out to explore the problem from a nutrition and wellness perspective.

After diving into the research around food inequities, I came across interesting findings about food deserts. In one video, a researcher explains that the evidence is conclusive: food deserts are not caused by lack of access to healthy options — in fact, even when given healthy food options, most people continue to make the same poor food choices.

Which led me to ask…

Why?

I started thinking: Maybe it’s more complicated than we think.

In fact, those who are most stressed out and traumatized are probably going to use food differently and make different eating choices, or have a different relationship to food, than those who are happy and have a life of relative ease with little chronic trauma to navigate on a daily basis.

It made me recognize the complex relationship we all have with food, and what it does for us on an unconscious level.

Drawing from experiences and insights in my own health journey, I came to a hypothesis.

Food choices are emotional. Those who have unfulfilled needs will be drawn to different things than those who have all their needs met.

I mentally recalled Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Shortly after, I came across this fascinating Johns Hopkins study on Twitter:

“We like things because we choose them. And, we dislike things that we don't choose.”
- Johns Hopkins University, October 2020

That really got my gears turning. I realized “Wellness” isn’t a problem of a lack of education, but more of a lack of interest in an openness to what’s unfamiliar. All this caused me to wonder,

How might we help develop preference for healthy choices?
How can we help get people to choose differently?

Research

Why do people make unhealthy choices? Or, what’s stopping them from making better ones?

Resistance

As someone who was an extremely picky eater in my childhood and well into adulthood and had a chronic fear of fruits and vegetables (note: not an exaggeration) and is now a health nut and strict vegan, this is something I have a wealth of personal experience and wisdom to draw from, so I began with all of what I already know from my own lived experience with this stuff, my own thinking patterns along the way, and those I’ve observed in others:

Don’t care.“I’ve always done it like this and I’m fine”, or “I’m not sick — why should I care?” The person feels there’s no perceived need to change unless they get sick, and then they’ll worry about it.
Too hard / stressful / overwhelming. The person feels the change is too much to take on or is too big an undertaking to have the energy for it, or there is too much to figure out to feel they can be successful.
Lack of positive support. The people around the person are not in support of the changes they’re trying to make, or rather than giving positive encouragement to keep going, might give them reasons they don’t need to change.
Lack of guidance. The person wants to make a change but doesn’t know where to turn to get the information or support they need to be successful. They might be feeling lost or need someone to help them along, to share the journey, see where to improve, give some essential pointers, do’s and don’ts, or a plan to follow to get some momentum.

Audience Needs

With most food/wellness inequity problems, and those living in food deserts, those with low income are affected. Typically black, indigenous, and people of color were represented in these areas. I sifted through articles and research to look out for problems specific to their viewpoints to fill gaps in my own thinking and shape a broader perspective beyond my own to get a better sense of their needs.

Some primary problem areas and insights were:

Trust. Black people were used to trial vaccines historically, and this along with the biases they face in medical care and treatment are enough to cause a notable lack of trust in doctors, causing them to underreport diseases/illness or not go to the doctor at all. They typically reported a distrust of doctors and their motives, expressing prescription drugs and the way doctors profit and are backed by the pharmaceutical industry as causes for concern.
Affordable, Quality Care. Biases against black people leading to poor quality of care, deepening racial trauma. Many people stated they received worse care or their symptoms minimized in importance because of skin color. Those who can afford good care get it, and those who don’t can only access this kind of subpar care and treatment at their income level.
Diverse, Natural Care. Many expressed they would be more comfortable with a black doctor or a doctor of their own culture or ethnicity. Many also expressed an interest in more holistic o or natural medicine options which were not represented at their income level.
Healthy Food Access. While this may not be the cause of food deserts, it’s still something that came up a lot in research and is still relevant to solving the problem holistically.
Knowledge of Healthcare Options. When asked, many didn’t know what could be done for their conditions or symptoms, or didn’t have any awareness that options were available to help. This also relates to point on trust — who’s going to seek help or options if they can’t find someone they can trust to listen to their health issues, or can’t offer them options that respect who they are and the kind of care that works for them?
Belief that unhealthy foods are healthy. People seemed to have a biased view of what foods were healthy based on what they learned from parents or in the environments they’re exposed to. Their health reflected their environment and the health habits they were exposed to growing up. Most seem to default to believing what they’re currently doing is not that bad, even if current data shows otherwise.

Iteration

Early Designs + Planning

After research, I began formulating the idea that this app could be designed around a specific issue: food, and how to use food as a form of medicine to heal health symptoms — an app to teach anybody how to use food as medicine. I interviewed a wide array of people from different backgrounds, age groups and various experience as health professionals, different diets and health habits to start tackling this idea.

User Interviews

I asked 7 potential users questions to get a sense of what they would want out of this kind of an app, what their personal needs are, what they’re currently doing to manage their health or what they do when they have questions about some weird health thing they’re experiencing, among various other questions. I kept track of their answers on Miro, then sorted data into common themes to help me get some clear insights to build the app around:

Problems

General health issues, like weight, COVID, health management, or pain management
Making healthy changes, like diet or habits like walking or eating less
Lifestyle or work-related stress
Exercises for a particular health issue

Additionally, many expressed a need for mindset help, especially when it comes to making a change that feels big to them, which I could relate to from my personal experience.

Needs

Learning: Learning how to do something new, like exercises
Progress Tracking: Keeping track of or being able to see progress visually, so they can know when they’re improving and see by how much
Recommendations: Guidance about what to do to improve based on where they’re at
Accountability: Someone to give them reminders, encouragement, and keep them on track; and someone to tell them when they’re about to be going off-track, or daily nudges/motivation; celebrating when they achieved something
Community: Tips, sharing experiences, asking questions and seeing others’ answers from a community of people with a common goal or issue for validation and encouragement

Insights

I had begun by asking what they might want in a “food as medicine app” to asking if it was something they would use. Then, after realizing most people said “no, I just Google everything” but later became a “yes, this actually sounds really cool and I can see myself using it a lot now”, I began by asking about a random health issue they recently Googled with shockingly helpful answers and insights.

Insight #1: Most of us are using Google as some form of health care system. They also know that Googling health issues is a flawed system with lots of conflicting information or room for alarming self-misdiagnoses, but feel it’s the best, and most convenient, option at their disposal (possibly because they are in the most control?). There is a need for trustworthy, reliable guidance that’s just a click away, but many are comfortable using Google. This solution would need to be smarter than Google, possibly leveraging personal information to make the experience and recommendations smarter and more personalized and relevant for them if they are to give up the deeply-embedded habit of Googling symptoms.

Insight #2: We need help being objective about our health and our habits to really be interested in making a change. The average person operates under the impression that they’re relatively healthy. It is common for people to always err towards giving themselves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their health, comparing themselves to their least healthy moments or experiences. Even relatively healthy people remain unaware of (or ignore) tons of valuable personal health data on a daily basis to rationalize unhealthy choices or avoid having to make changes to unhealthy habits they’re comfortable continuing to do. This is mostly all happening on a completely unconscious level.

It’s only when I began asking them more specific questions that they began to re-look at their health more closely— for example, the question “How many servings of vegetables do you eat?”. People become more objective and can see their former bias more clearly, and where there might be room for improvement, once these answers are thought about all together. An app like this would need to help them become aware of their blind spots.

Insight #3: We need help recognizing self-made barriers to our own healing. In one interview, I interviewed a naturopath who listens to peoples’ health problems on a daily basis. He was dealing with sciatica issues from work issues, and after thinking about it, realized that he often takes care of everyone else but forgets about taking care of himself, and one way the app could support him would be to help him recognize more ways that he could take care of himself, suggesting notifications for reminders and recommendations on how to incorporate more supportive work habits into his lifestyle to improve his health when work seems to be a barrier to healing.

Insight #4: The first thing we need to learn is that there’s something we don’t know. Most people feel they already know everything, and they don’t need help. They felt this app would be for somebody else — but as we dove deeper, they realized how it could help them, and what they were already doing (usually through Google) to manage their symptoms, and what those symptoms were.

Design

Prototyping

What I Learned

Working with Teams: This project taught me a lot about working with a team in a learning setting, and working with people in a team situation. I learned about how to practice non-violent communication and internalized how to become a better leader and communicator and motivator when things are not going as planned or team engagement is not what it could be.

UX Design: I learned a lot about design research, conducting interviews, and how to conduct interviews in a way that allows the process to be more evolutionary rather than evaluative as I learn more, and adjust my approach as I go to get better information and ask better questions. I learned the value of user research and iteration and how important it is to the process of developing something people want and need. I also reflected quite a bit about objectivity and unconscious psychology as it pertains to user research and how it could influence products tremendously if not explored and considered throughout the research process. I would like to explore more on this.