THe brief
Active Plus is a New York-based non-profit seeking to promote physical fitness and mental health among at-risk students. Active Plus’ holistic wellness philosophy focuses on cultivating 4 pillars: 1) fitness 2) mindfulness 3) nutrition 4) leadership. Active Plus currently serves roughly 500 6th-12th grade students in the Harlem area.
Active Plus’ web-based fitness and wellness programs served as a supplement to in-school physical education programs until the pandemic hit and remote learning became the norm. The New York Public School System turned to programs like Active Plus for a larger role in their educational curriculum as they transitioned into this new normal.
Active Plus needed to better understand their primary audience and expand their program. Even after the pandemic, they’d like to maintain strong ties with teachers and public schools to continue providing a vital service to these young students. They needed some comprehensive background research on their audience and their UX in order to establish growth and grant-writing goals for 2021.
MY roles
RESEARCH DESIGN
I led research strategy and execution. I also designed ethics protocols for consent and secure data management that can now be used by Active Plus in the future.
SURVEY DESIGN & DATA VISUALIZATION
I designed and distributed a survey to students to better understand 1) what content they gravitated to in Active Plus 2) how they understand concepts like fitness and wellness 3) demographic breakdown. Key insights from the survey were visualized as charts, some of which can be seen below.
INTERVIEWING
I designed questionnaires and conducted interviews with students, teachers, parents, and multiple expert consultants. Interviewees answered questions in semi-structured interviews that generally lasted 30-40 minutes.
STAKEHOLDER COMMUNICATIONS
Managing the scope of a project like this is tough! A great way to keep stakeholders informed of research developments and to make sure the research remains focused is to schedule regular insight presentations with stakeholders. This was also a great opportunity for stakeholders to suggest additional research participants or offer their own expert perspectives.
research approach
One of the most important aspects of an ethnographic study is a well-developed sense of reflexivity on the part of the researcher.
As a white male researcher, I understood and respected the major boundaries that come with interviewing minors about their physical fitness and mental well-being. Parents were present with students who were interviewed and efforts were undertaken to insure all participants were providing informed consent.
Nonetheless I would be interested to see the results of future research with minors if it were conducted by someone like a child therapist who has demonstrated experience working with minors and is better equipped to explore sensitive topics in a productive and safe manner.
setting
Research was conducted among public school students, teachers and parents in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. All interviews were conducted remotely over Zoom.
timeline
Research data was collected between November and December of 2020.
grounded theory
I elected to use a grounded theory approach, in which themes and overarching concepts are derived from the data as its collected, rather than after all data was collected. This was due in part to the short timespan for data collection. Because I was working with a very clearly defined study group in a clearly defined setting, I felt grounded theory would also be the best way to efficiently identify patterns, if any, in their collective behavior.
selected survey data
demographics
Here’s a demographic breakdown of our study community. Students who responded to the survey ranged from the 6th to the 12th grade and had been using Active Plus as part of their remote physical education for several months.
engagement challenges
Nearly half of respondents encountered some trouble accessing Active Plus’ program. Some students struggled to find enough space at home for home fitness while others were plagued by limited or inconsistent Internet access. How can your design account for such key environmental variables that are completely out of your control?
research insights
resource access & Class
Roughly 49% of students report experiencing limited internet access, limited space to focus, or limited space to exercise. Access to public space, privacy, internet, technology, a kitchen and housewares, or a convenient grocery store all play a role in the extent to which students can consistently engage active plus content.
peer-based collaboration
During the pandemic, children were often still able to “meet” their friends and interact via Zoom or social media. They are now expert managers of digital friendships, but still feel like they’re missing out on important moments in each other’s lives outside of remote classes. Furthermore, they understand social media to be a surrogate experience for in- person interaction rather than a supplement.
growth & awareness of self
Understanding the way the pandemic has given children an entirely new set of terms to interpret their own changes and wellness is going to be a key aspect of understanding how this generation relates to the world after the pandemic is over. Be prepared for the possibility that collaboration will not come as quickly to them and that they’ll need extra coaching and attention to collaborate effectively in person as well as online.
play & achievement
Play and mobile games have been a big way that children compete and collaborate during the pandemic. It’s not just achievement systems in mobile games, these young people spend a lot of time on game streaming platforms like twitch as spectators as well. Mobile games are both a competitive social activity and a pastime.
risk & safety
Isolation may also become a larger part of this generation’s post-pandemic experience due to its pandemic associations with safety. Concepts like social distancing are a “new normal” for adults like us but we anticipate to a large extent that things will “go back” to something roughly resembling a pre-covid normal. This may well not be the case, who are growing up with the pandemic as occupying a protracted period of their development.
“their own space”
Children are open to guidance on their own terms. They want to explore their own sense of independence to better understand their own limits and capabilities. This is especially true for digital environments, now that they have spent a full year exporting their in-person friendships onto these platforms.
design recommendations
curriculum expansion
Expand ways for students to learn about and improve mental wellness exercises. Too much emphasis on sports and nutrition for students who may not have access to needed resources will turn students away who would otherwise be capable of mastering a mental wellness and leadership curriculum.
mobile experience
Students are far more likely to have access to mobile devices rather than computers. More than that, students are likely to spend more of their time in mobile environments. Future Active Plus designs should at the very least be adaptive.
involve students
Many of the above research insights suggest designers should be wary about relying too much on their own assumptions or empathy when designing for this pandemic-affected age group. Frequent usability testing and co-creation workshops with students should provide consistent insight into what is and isn’t working and guide the prototyping process around primary user needs.
content strategy
One of the best ways Active Plus can create an engaging and positive wellness environment for children is through language choices and overall content design.
no slang
Right/wrong choices, or attempts by adults to use slang would absolutely make or break the platform. Language in any Active Plus experience should remain informative, neutral, simple, and free of slang.
focused social/sharing functionality
Children could benefit from a live feed system for sharing fitness or wellness achievements/activities with their peers, however, without careful management this could become an opportunity for bullying and damaging behavior. Significantly limit the type of content that can be shared, disallow all forms of private messages, and limit the ways that posts can be shared, commented on, or reacted to.
group-based achievements
One way of preventing bullying behavior to take place on an Active Plus social platform (should you decide to go that route), would be to make any game/achievement system group-based rather than individual-based. This means that students within a class would each be able to explore and develop their own diverse strengths and the social penalties for not being exceptional would be lessened.
elevate a consistent body-positive vocabulary
The children of the pandemic have developed a full lexicon for assessing their own mental and physical wellness. This could serve as an inspiration for Active Plus’s content strategy. The Active Plus content could be designed to introduce a practical lexicon of body- positive terms to students