Loo thpaste
Loot box + toothpaste? Loothpaste!
This service design had a focus on the situation of young people’s tooth brushing behavior and was trying to use design methods to help them to maintain their tooth brushing habit.
About Project
Project type
Service, mobile app and product
Organizations
Dental care centre, university
Time
2018.01-2018.06
My Role
From research to final service design proposal
Background
Oral health has always been one of the public health problems that people are concerned about. It is not only about having good teeth but also related to people’s general health conditions. General situation of oral health has improved during recent decades, with the professional information given in schools and at dental visits, young people have a good awareness of risk factors for dental problems. Nevertheless, there is a stagnation of young people’s oral health.
Due to technological improvements in the cosmetic industry and market competition, home-use oral care products available in the marketplace offer a great variety of options. People have the awareness of the importance of oral health and an increase in the consumption of oral care products has been observed in the last decades. Sometimes it might make people confused about what to use rather than to have better oral hygiene habits. Thus, there is big potential space for what design can do to help motivate young people to maintain a good habit with home-use oral care products.
Research
​Research Question
How can design help motivate young people in Sweden to maintain tooth brushing habit?
Interview
​After desk work and literature review, I wanted to know more information from the reality.
So I had some interviews with local services, including private ones and public ones.
From the dentists and oral hygienists, I got information and advice. I concluded like this:
They suggested me that the age of these young people should be 23-30. They usually don’t have plans to go for an annual check to the dental services and they go there only until they have problems.
So their dental care activities at home is very important. Actually most of their problems could be prevented by regular tooth brushing. This is proved to be a very effective way while the situation showed that they are not performing it well.
Theory
Design for behavior change
Buchanan stated that all design is intended to influence user behavior. Ludden and Hekkert presented a framework of design for healthy behavior based on the transtheoretical model of behavior change created. In this framework, there are four design strategies. The first is about raising people’s awareness. “Enabling” means the design interventions that help people make a healthy choice in accordance with their situation and preference. Next is when people have already changed, interventions could help them maintain it or find new possibilities. After the habit is formed, design interventions should fade out.
Based on previous research, it shows that young people have the awareness to brush their teeth and they do understand the consequence of doing it but their behavior is not coherent. The problem of changing their behavior to a more healthy habit consists in motivating them to maintain this behavior. In Ludden & Hekkert’s framework, it is in the third design strategy area where design needs strategies aimed at motivation.
Motivation
By distinguishing between different orientations of motivation, there are two types of motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is doing an activity because the process can bring joy or the activity attract one’s interest itself. While extrinsic motivation let people start to perform an action even without interest but for instrumental value (e.g. rewards and punishments). There’s evidence showed that if the outcome is positive, which means if it is a reward, it will help strengthen the habit. Compared to traditional rewards, variable rewards are not predictable. They can activate users’ wanting and desire.
Context analysis in academy and in market
Based on the theories, it can be concluded that a variable reward system will have a good effect on helping people to maintain a good habit. However, there’s not much articles about design for behavior change relate to oral health right now.
Analyzing products in the market, it showed there's a growing consumption of home-use oral care products. Some products are caring about high sales or functions rather than helping people to have a good habit. There are not too many products specifically targeted at young people. There are some phone applications but they need user’s self report which is not convenient.
Exploration
Design toolkit - Design with intent
So here we go to my early stage of generating ideas.
At this stage, I used a method called 'Design with intent' to defined the target behavior I wanted users to achieve. It gives designers inspirations to influence user’s behavior from different perspectives.
By using it, I got some ideas and they are summarized in these form. But there are too many and it is important to screen them and find a direction.
Interviews and questionaires
From interviews and questionares sent to target group, an important factor helped me to narrow down the ideas. Majority people were caring more about the flavor of toothpaste during their brushing. Research results were also considered in the screening and then helped to generate a better solution for the problem. I narrowed down the scope and then have some ideas of a service system using new flavor of toothpaste as a variable reward.
Ideation
Here is a sketch of the idea. In the sketch, two different ways of how this reward system works were designed.
Afterward, the first way was used as a foundation of the system. There were also some ideas from the second one was adjusted and added to it. Gashapon was designed to be both online and offline. The toothpaste can be delivered by provider if it was ordered. The package can only be used as gift sending to others.
The following is a storyboard from a user’s perspective to show that how they experience the service.
Design proposal
The provider of this service is a toothpaste brand/supplier. The provider has general products - very basic flavor of toothpaste - for young people to buy through basic sales channels. These products have the role to firstly get in touch with these young people and are also included in the service system. When these young people buy toothpaste, they will have habit recorded in an automatic way and be able to track it which will help motivate them. It is also the connection between users and the provider.
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Viriable rewards are new flavour of toothpaste. These versions of taste will not be sold in the market and should be ensured uniqueness by the provider.
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The more consistent and longer users maintain brushing teeth, the more rewards – new flavor of toothpaste - they will get. They will have a lottery of toothpaste flavour via a kind of virtual gashapon.
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This service should always bring a positive feeling to users and convey an attitude of a healthy lifestyle.
It is a long-term service, however, the basic steps are always circulating. To summarize the connection between provider and users and how this system works, a user journey map is showing below. Some marketing actions, like commercials, giveaways, etc., might also be included in the “beforehand” stage.
When users are integrated within a service system, they will only experience specific points instead of the whole system - touchpoints. So I would also give touchpoints examples as design suggestions in this system.
Touchpoints
Toothpaste
Sensor
Application
Gashapon
Users can play gashapon on their APP. It can also be a physical machine in the stores or supermarket. Users can exchange their points into a code and enter into a physical gashapon to get a chance. The physical one should be self-service and widely applied in supermarkets and convenience shops. The implementation of physical machines depends on the market area and the development of the service. It will be at a later stage.
Iteration & future work
This design proposal is a reward system provided by toothpaste companies or organizations. It will not only help motivate people to use toothpaste and brush their teeth but also bring providers economic benefits when more people consuming their products. The connection between users offers companies more chances to understand their costumers and get improved. Using a mobile phone APP as one touchpoint makes this communication even more convenient and fast. It can also become a good tool for promotion when connects to social media.
In this service, the descriptions of touchpoints are conceptual and giving a general design direction and needed effects. In practical development, more things need to be discussed, for example, cost of material, production, electronic technology.
This service provides a framework to motivate people to maintain a behavior. Tooth brushing is a health-related behavior. So when designing a new service concerning motivation, this reward system needs to be tested and adjusted. The choosing of a target group – young people – was based on the situation in Sweden. When applying to other countries, new context and problems should be redefined, which means that the target group would also change.