Brief

A discovery and alpha project exploring the hypothesis that digital technology could improve health and wellbeing outcomes in the borough by empowering residents to make healthier lifestyle changes.

Client

Southwark Council

What we did

The team wanted to understand how they could maximise the power of digital to engage and support residents, whilst proactively reducing inequality.

They wanted to understand needs holistically from a resident viewpoint, particularly those from more deprived backgrounds where the perception is that they might be digitally disengaged; and whether residents saw a role for the council in supporting them.

For our research we carried out two focus group sessions with six residents each spread across the borough, with five subsequent interviews to probe further on our focus group discussions.

Our discussion topics included:

• What a healthy lifestyle is (mental, physical and sexual health)

• Motivation to make healthy lifestyle changes.

• Residents relationships with location/physical spaces & how that may inspire better behaviour.

• Mobile phone usage, usefulness and the feelings associated with phone applications ie texts, social media, etc.

We also enabled Southwark to test a new public health brand to support health improvement in the borough, testing out multiple brand propositions to ascertain what resonated best with residents and inspired action, to be used by the borough to promote relevant public health services.

Results

Working with the council, and a range of national experts, local stakeholders and local residents, we conducted our ideation sessions online, as the UK had gone into lockdown by this point!

The two concepts that were conceived from the ideation sessions:

• A platform for Southwark Residents to connect with others in Southwark who would like to improve their lifestyle habits

• A mini-site & a conversational interface that offers information to Southwark residents on how to develop healthy lifestyle habits.

We made a number of a service advertisements to test the core value proposition & whether residents actually wanted these concepts to come to life.

The concepts evolved into a digital programme for Southwark residents to learn how to develop healthy habits in 30 days.

The website will also provide Southwark residents with information on healthy lifestyle tips, activities and services that exist in Southwark.

Southwark Council are now working to progress this work through a number of alpha & beta projects.