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generative research on the wellness experience for Black and Brown women
Dates: Mar 2022
Role: Cultural & Market Researcher
Tools: Miro, Google Slides
Problem
Pollen was trying to establish its presence with a new market: Afro-Diasporic communities in the US and Europe. To do this, it was looking to partner with an established R&B singer with 15M+ followers to curate a wellness experience that targeted her core fanbase.
My research partner and I were tasked to understand how Black and Brown women define and practice wellness.
The findings would inform the design and execution of an experience that would meaningfully serve the wellness experience for Black and Brown women and expand Pollen’s market.
Solution
We conducted in-depth qualitative research and delivered a workshop with cross-functional leads within a short time-frame to:
Advocate for the target consumer by immersing key business partners in the consumer’s aspirations, mental models, and behaviors
Brainstorm tactical design elements of the experience (e.g., itinerary, messaging, partners)
Refine Pollen’s marketing & design approach for a new customer demographic
Process
Scope | LANDSCAPE REVIEW & PLANNING
After doing a review of the landscape, we decided to focus on qualitative studies to gain an immersive understanding
We started with conducting a landscape review of existing experiences, trends, and thought leadership related to wellness for Black and Brown women.
The context and background knowledge helped us decide on our research questions, research themes, and methodologies.
Conduct | RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How do Black and Brown women define and practice wellness?
Experience: What kind of environment, experiences, and activities are expected in a wellness space?
Music: How does music tie into the wellness journey?
Evolution: How does wellness evolve over their life course?
Cost: How does class/price play a role in the wellness experience?
Luxury: Is there an association between wellness and luxury?
How might they define the conditions of comfort and safety in wellness spaces?
Psychological Safety: How do Black and Brown women feel in wellness spaces that are for their cultural community? In multicultural wellness spaces?
Expertise: Who has credibility in the wellness spaces? How is that credibility exhibited?
Marketing: What kinds of messaging are appealing to Black and Brown women who seek wellness experiences?
Conduct | FROM THE DESK
Wellness is not new to Black women and it has been embraced for generations – even if practices weren’t mainstream
Top Insights
Wellness is defined by multiple dimensions: mind, body, and soul
The concept of wellness isn’t new for Black and Brown women — practices have been embraced for generations but not mainstream
Wellness as a practice has become more popular in recent decades due to the popularized concept of ‘self care’
We conducted 4 expert interviews with individuals to understand:
The evolution of wellness as a concept, industry and practice
The current landscape of the wellness industry
Key considerations for curating a wellness experience for Black and Brown women
Conduct | IN THE FIELD
More than anything, respondents wanted a wellness space to ‘just be’ — without societal and family pressures
We conducted qualitative research that immersed us in the lives of potential consumers:
5 remote semi-structured interviews
2 in-home participant observations
2 in-person direct observations
Key Quotes:
Analyze | AFFINITY MAPPING
The data from the research were aggregated into 7 themes that fit under the core concept: “just being”
After peer-reviewing our research findings, we aggregated the data into emerging themes. These were distilled into the top 7 themes that were organized into a framework: “just being”.
Analyze | STORYBOARDING
We used this “just being” framework to ground our recommendations for designing user-centric wellness experiences
Synthesizing research into a workshop presentation deck was the most difficult part of the project, as we wanted to present our themes with the necessary nuance.
Ultimately, we grounded our recommendation in our “just being framework” and included quotes and images to convey lived experiences.
Deliver | WORKSHOP
Our workshop helped business members empathize with our customers and start designing for them
To finalize our project, we conducted a 1-day presentation and brainstorming workshop with cross-functional leads from the business, marketing, and partnerships to place them in the “minds” and “lives” of target consumers.
After immersing them into the research, we brainstormed tactical implications of each research theme on design features.
Impacts
Ultimately, these research findings were essential in enabling the Pollen marketing and partnership leads to move forward in their planning discussion with the R&B singer.
More tangibly, company leads were able to:
Identify key messages and positioning for audience members
Identify the strategic implications for event partners and suppliers
Validate and narrow down logistical features of event (location, size, themes)
As this was one of the first projects from the Community Insights team, this project positioned our team as a trusted thought partner and voice of the customer for future events.
Some Big Takeaways:
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A key part of ethnography is immersion into the lives of the individuals being studied, AND to reflect those learnings to your eventual audience. In attending direct observations, I sometimes would need a reminder from my teammate to take pictures and audio clips to share with our team in the delivery phase. This project was a great reminder to showcase evidence of all sorts throughout the research. Our workshop participants did not all come from the community we were studying, so we needed to make sure they had enough immersion to start ideation.
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A seemingly endless range of insights can be drawn from qualitative data, so it’s essential to keep the surrounding context in mind to understand how the data fits into the bigger picture. Always ground the research in context. In this case, it was important to note the trends in wellness and how they served different communities of women differently; even as women themselves defined wellness similarly, the environment in which they practiced it influenced their mental states and outcomes.