How do we set our minds in the right frequency?

MindSpire

The founder of MindSpire had the idea that she wanted to reach out and help as many people as possible and therefore make it possible for people to easy find their inner peace, meditate, listen and train their brain waves and through the use of stimulation of the vagus nerve to potentially provide non-invasive treatment to symptoms such as anxiety, stress and depression. This ambitious goal was researched in the University of Kent in the UK by a talented team of researchers and specialists.

Problem/ Challenge

They did not have any prototype and did not have a specific target group yet. They were missing the user perspective. Who were the users? Who was going to use and benefit from such a device if successfully commercialised? How should it look and what features should it include, also into the mobile application what would benefit the users the most? These were some of the questions that they needed answers for.

Approach

Public Intelligence wrapped their heads around who could be contacted as a representative of some of the different potential target groups, so that we can research opportunities into the different areas. Afterwards a focused workshop setup was made where different people representing different areas participated. In this workshop we were interested to learn about their experiences and their daily lives and how do they cope with certain situations. Experiences are clearer and more factual. Of course, they are characterised by what people think is valuable and that is precisely what we are looking for in the user insights: Which experiences are valuable, and which are not, to the citizens and the employees. In this way we get insight into what we need to build on, what we need to change and what is particularly important to develop. To a limited degree we also focus on what solutions they dream about. Therefore, we also wanted to hear their opinion on what could be a technological device that could help them cope better and aid their visits to a specialist, how would this impact them and would they be willing to try it out. We had a brainstorming session about different designs and what was the most important for them from their user-driven perspective.

Result

We provided a lot of helpful user insights on functionality and design to the company. We could pin-point the areas that would be most relevant to the users and the design that they would be willing to go with through a couple of suggestion sketches. Last but not least, we were able to say which primary segments should MindSpire focus on and later aid and validate those target groups with research and statistical information about the Danish market. Some of those insights also included valuable criteria for what the participants thought is important to have included into such an application.