Results from The Veggie Challenge

Veggies that I LoveA conceptual design by Loreanne Garcia Ottati

Design ChallengeUse cue behaviors to get people to identify their five

favorite veggiesTime limit: 1 hour, 30 min

Veggies that I Love

Persuasive Purpose To get people to email me a veggie that they love every day for

five days

User Description

Josh is a Graduate Studentat Stanford. He is 27 yearsold, he is very social andloves eating out with hisfriends. He wants to eathealthy but when he thinks of vegetables nopleasant taste comes to mind. Josh wants toassociate vegetables witha taste that he likes so hecan to look forward toeating them

User Experience

Josh wants to eat healthy, he wants to eat more vegetables. However, he doesn’t associate vegetables with a pleasant taste. He decides that to change his mindset he will join the five day challenge

Josh follows his daily routine, he wakes up and goes to class. Later that day, he remembers that he needs to send me an email with one of his favorite veggies. After he emails me, he receives a “thank you” email

On the Third day of the challenge Josh receives a funny email remind him that the challenge is still on

Thanks to the challenge Josh discovers that he doesn’t like the taste of conventional vegetables but he loves V8 so he starts drinking one every day

Tools used

1. Kick Off Email 2. Mid-Challenge Reminder

Theoretical Justifications

Main Justification:

• Identifying your favorite veggies will create a buzz around eating vegetables, hopefully this will shape the user’s behaviors so that in the future they associate veggies with a pleasant taste

BJ Fogg’s Model• Motivation:

• User want to eat more veggies

• Simplicity• Easy access: users use email everyday• Low barriers: an email requires almost no effort

• Triggers• The only trigger will be a kick off email and a mid-challenge reminder

The Challenge was successful!

Participation per users was high but variable

Total Participation

= 84%!

Total Participation

= 84%!

High participation user quotes

• “I participated because I wanted to help a friend”

• “It was easy and simple”

• “I left the message in my inbox so I would remember everyday”

• “Every time I saw you I remembered to send you my favorite veggie”

Low participation user quotes

• “I forgot”

• “If I don’t have a reminder I’ll forget”

Participation was 100% when the mid-challenge reminder was sent out

Stanford University, Spring 2010CS377v - Creating Health Habitshabits.stanford.edu

But.. Did people actually eat more veggies?

We didn’t track… but 100% of the users said that they thought their veggie consumption didn’t change after the challenge

Main Insights

• If you focus on the smallest simple behavior you can actually engage users, however it is hard to measure the impact of the intervention because the smallest behavior may or may not form into a habit

• Even for the simplest behaviors, you must have daily hot triggers to increase user participation

Recommendation

• To increase impact of future interventions, design and implement a habit formation challenge by breaking the habit into all the small simple behaviors that matter. Then, you can guide the user step by step and later measure habit formation results