The qualitative interviews using the 6 Minds Framework helped us identify two unique personas. We also uncovered an interesting insight that we might not have discovered without this framework! Keep reading to learn how we found these…
When I got the assignment to explore the stigma surrounding diabetes, it definitely wasn’t my first time hearing about diabetes. I probably heard about it sometime in childhood when I learned that my grandfather had it. Back then, all I knew was that people with diabetes shouldn’t eat a lot of sweets. Fast forward to today, when I started reading about diabetes, and talking to people about it, I realised that there is so much more to it — myths, fear, societal perceptions, body-image issues, guilt and whatnot.
Let’s dive in…
The Brief
What was the assignment brief given to us?
To investigate the societal stigma surrounding diabetes in young adults and develop effective behavioural interventions to address it. Explore common stereotypes, misconceptions, and discriminatory attitudes. Examine the role of social media and other communication channels in perpetuating or challenging the stigma.
What was the expected outcome?
Design interventions based on behavioural science principles to challenge
negative stereotypes and promote positive attitudes.
The Process
Now, here is the fun part….We, my teammate Avanti Karmarkar ( @yellowblunder ) and I, only had 6 days to complete the assignment! 😵💫 We quickly chartered out a plan and got started.
We started by doing a quick secondary research to understand the self-stigma surrounding diabetes. Here are some statements we came across:
Initially, we thought of getting a survey filled by the individuals with type 2 diabetes to understand self-stigma. However, we soon realised that we didn’t have the right set of people in our network and with a deadline around the corner we decided to fall back on our backup plan — to focus only on public stigma.
6 Minds Framework
We decided to go with the 6 Minds framework as mentioned by John Whalen in the book ‘Design for How People Think.’ Now, you must be wondering, “Why this framework? What’s so special about it?”
To be honest, I owe the decision to my recency bias. I had read the book the previous month and this framework was at the top of my mind. Plus, I was curious to see if this framework would work.
Here is a quick glance at what it’s all about:
This framework helped us get comprehensive information about the public stigma surrounding diabetes from 6 different angles. Though we were initially skeptical of the framework’s effectiveness, we were stoked once we analysed the data and derived insights. 😲🤩 We could not only come up with 2 personas from 9 participants, but we also found an additional significant pattern from the interviews — that pointed to childhood education as the possible root cause for the negative perception of diabetes.
Interview Findings & Insights
While talking to the participants, we were curious to know the following:
Why is diabetes such a stigma
What patterns can we spot to derive personas from the interviews?
How might we come up with interventions based on the needs of the personas?
We went ahead and started putting together everything we heard over the last 2 days from the 9 participants in the age group 22–44 years.
Based on the information gathered, we could identify some broad patterns, giving rise to the following personas:
What next? We got on a call and brainstormed a little to come up with behavioural design interventions that could possibly help to reduce the public stigma around diabetes based on what might help the persona.
Persona 1: The Concerned Guardian
Insight:
Concerned caregivers expressed sadness about the potential of getting diabetes, often associating it with lifestyle restrictions. They worry when someone close is diagnosed, indicating an emotional investment in family health.
Intervention:
A social media campaign around “Diabetes is not the end of the world.” These individuals often engage with health-related content on social media. So, we wondered, why not use this channel to uplift their mood and bust some lifestyle restriction myths. There is a potential to impact 15–20% of the target audience if the campaign is well-executed.
Persona 2: The Indifferent Observer
Insight:
Indifferent observers don’t engage in social media content on diabetes and hence their knowledge of the topic is limited.
Intervention 1:
Interactive talks, games & workshops could be arranged at their workplaces. Since they don’t interact or look for diabetes-related info, it’s not possible to educate them through social media. Hence, this workplace intervention might improve their knowledge and habits around diabetes. There is a possibility of 10–15% improved awareness in case of workplace intervention.
Intervention 2:
Billboard advertising could be a channel to educate them about diabetes-related info. Billboards viewed during transportation might prove to be a good channel of information dissemination as research shows that exposure can motivate behaviour. There is a possibility of 30–40% increase in awareness in the case of this billboard intervention.
Was that all? No, we found one more thing — the cherry on the cake 🍒
Finding:
Most participants mentioned, “I got to know about it during childhood, maybe school textbooks.”
We observed the above recurring theme in the interview answers suggesting that people are first exposed to diabetes during at school.
Insight:
Considering the negative perception around diabetes, we can infer schools were likely where people first formed the impression of diabetes as a frightening condition.
We wondered, what interventions can we propose at a childhood stage to increase awareness and portray diabetes in a positive, preventable light?
Intervention 1:
Competitions could be conducted to improve heath-related knowledge. This might motivate students by providing a recognized form of accomplishment. Adding rewards for winners might further encourage student participation. We were unable to find quantitative facts on the impact of competitions in raising awareness on health topics.
Intervention 2:
Infographics could be displayed in health-check up rooms and textbooks
to inform children of diabetes. We observed that individuals were not that aware about pre-diabetes and early warning signs. This intervention would encourage exposure and motivate information-seeking behaviours about pre-diabetes in children. There is a possibility of 90%+ students finding information in infographic posters useful and 80%+ students gaining knowledge and getting myths removed.
Let’s sum it up…
If the behavioural interventions suggested above are implemented, we expect to see diabetes portrayed in a positive light on social media for concerned caregivers. We also believe that the interventions — workplace initiatives, billboard campaigns, and childhood education — will successfully raise awareness and educate both children and indifferent observers about the topic.
Since Avanti and I only had 6 days to complete the project, we had to make our assumptions and take research references from various countries assuming that similar behaviour might be applicable in India as well. We also had to limit our qualitative study participants to 9. Hence, as the next steps, we propose to increase the sample size for the qualitative study and include participants with varied demographics. We also propose to conduct pilot studies to test the impact of proposed interventions in India (Post-test).
We believe that, by implementing such behavioural interventions effectively, we can bring about a change in society by educating more children and adults about diabetes prevention and management. We believe that this would eventually lead to decreased discrimination against people with diabetes in workplaces and social settings leading to equal opportunities for all.
If you enjoyed reading this research readout or if it has helped you learn something new, we would love to know! Let us know in the comments below or drop us a message on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you — Signing off, Upasna Kakkat and Avanti Karmarkar 🙂
Oh, one more thing, we want to thank First Principle Labs for sharing an assignment brief that was broad enough to allow us to explore different perspectives while also being specific and narrow enough to direct and guide our outcomes.
(P.S. This assignment was a part of the application process for the Behavioural Design Fellowship program conducted by First Principle Labs.)
Okay, signing off for real this time! Don’t forget to share what you enjoyed in this article. Drop a comment👇 or give 👏👏👏😃!
How Behavioural Design Interventions Can Slash Diabetes Stigma by at Least 30% was originally published in Muzli – Design Inspiration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.