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Role: UX & Service Designer

Creating a digital weight management tool for children

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The challenge

Public Health England (PHE) wanted to understand whether building a digital solution or investing in/endorsing an existing solution could help families across England achieve and maintain a healthier weight.

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Ethnographic research photos

The approach

The programme followed the new strategy for digital transformation advocated by GDS (Government Digital Services) and was a completely new way of working for PHE. Starting at the Discovery phase, the programmes aim was to understand if there was a) a need for a digital service and b) the opportunities that would be worth developing before deciding if the team should continue onto the Alpha phase.

 

Discovery was split into three parts:

1) Market research: to see what was out there and interview creators to hear about successes and failures in this area
 

2) User research: with 10 families across urban, suburban and rural areas of England with weight management issues to understand their needs
 

3) A gaps analysis: synthesising the market and user research data to identify any unmet needs

The outcome

Discovery research concluded that there were a significant number of user needs that were going unmet by current digital and non digital weight management services. A report detailing findings as well as suggestions on how to proceed during Alpha was created. The report proposed a hypothesis to test and underpin Alpha:

“If we take note of the opportunities that going digital provides us with then we can deliver more cost effective, accessible and scalable solutions that will result in more children leaving primary school with a healthier weight.”

Sparking debate around ethical AI in healthcare

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