>> So let's go back to MeYou Health. Only after all of this research did they finally ask the what if question, and begin to generate ideas. Within 18 months, the MeYou Health team created and launched a dozen different projects. Websites, mobile applications, and Facebook and Twitter apps. From the outside of the process, Chris had believed that games could play an important role in behavior change, especially as a vehicle for jump starting social connection. So MeYou Health hired talented game designers and engineers, who started developing small applications, in order to have minimum viable products ready for launch as quickly as possible. Rather than giving this product team a traditional specifications list however, Chris immersed them in the research data. So that the early designs they created could be deployed and refined in the context of real user interaction. The gamers thought a lot about the important theme that emerged from the interviews around the idea of small incremental changes, leading to much bigger changes. Moving away from big, overwhelming goals and focusing on smaller, easily achieved goals, not only helped the MeYou Health team rapidly build simple prototypes and develop a number of networking platforms simultaneously. It turned out to be a good approach to helping their clients improve their health as well. One of the ideas that emerged, one of my favorites, was called Monumental. It was a mobile app that set a tangible goal of getting people to take the stairs, instead of elevators. It physically tracked the number of vertical steps a person took, and then mapped that progress against what it would take to climb a well known monument, such as the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State building. This allowed people like the validation seeker, or the excuse maker, to calibrate and then celebrate smaller successes. And this allowed them to work towards greater, long term goals. Another product they created was the Daily Challenge. To help people improve their well-being by sending them a message every day, with one small step that they could take to improve their health. It also encouraged people to share their challenge, and share their progress with family and friends. So what came of this? The MeYou Health team working with Essential, confirmed its hypothesis that online social interaction could have a positive effect on individuals. To date, the company's flagship application, the Daily Challenge, has enrolled hundreds of thousands of members who've completed millions of small health-improving actions. If we look at the metric of return engagement, the percentage of people who've used the product for a length of time who still continue to use it, their research found that about 2 3rds of Daily Challenge users were still active after 90 days. Most websites are pleased with 20 to 30% engagement at 30 days. After 1 year, 34% of users were still using the product. Much higher than rates for other wellness products. And it was easy to see the networking effects, as people formed challenge groups and support groups, in the applications. Even more significant, MeYou Health worked with leading research scientists, to design and execute a trial involving more than 1,500 adults. The primary success measure was well-being improvement, as measured by the validated assessment developed by Health Wave. At 90 days, participants had improved their well-being over two points more than participants assigned to the control condition. This is a clinically significant finding, given that previous research demonstrated that even a 1% increase in well-being translated into a 1% decrease in health care costs. These findings demonstrate not just that the daily challenge is effective in improving well-being in a real world setting, Chris told us. But reemphasize that well-being and health are social phenomena, and that interventions need to leverage an individual social network to maximize their effect. To capture the human face of their success, Essential prepared a short video for MeYou Health that told the Daily Challenge story, featuring some of the people that they had interviewed during the what is phase in their research. And I'd invite you to take a moment to watch that video now. [MUSIC] >> And I never had time for myself over the last 13 years. >> Weather's been kind of cold, and it's hard to get out. >> In the Spring I think I'll feel much better. >> Well, I want to be happier and I think that's a struggle. >> All right, come January, I'm going to lose weight, I'm not going to smoke, I'm not going to drink, I'm not going to, thinking that's first of all, going to give in more energy but, it all, it's all talk. [MUSIC] >> What I started out doing, like, just five push-ups every morning. >> Okay. >> Just five. >> And doing something good for myself. it just gets my energy flowing >> You know, I feel like I can be healthier without being, you know, a marathon runner. >> Yeah. I've been taking care of myself lately, you know? >> Being kind to myself. And realizing I can't do it all. >> And I try and fit in some fruits and vegetables. >> Health is not just physical. It's mental and emotional too. >> It's like I've experienced for myself, like, really extra highs and extra lows. You know? And I just feel like I'm not 100% of who I can be if I don't, you know, eat decently. >> Well being is the way I feel. Health and happiness. It's not about the scale. >> Just sharing ideas, sharing ways of coping. >> And sometimes my drive home is me calling friends and catching up with them. >> It's huge, it's being able to keep in touch with, with everybody. >> My motto this year is healthy, happy, and whole. I'm working on myself inside and out. >> That helps motivate me to do it when somebody else, doing the same thing I'm doing. >> We have a little postage stamp garden. In the summer I have fresh growing food. >> Sometimes as I'm going into work I like to put on a pump up song. >> Just a little task, but the reflection it brings and the change it creates? Huge! >> We focus in on the positive things, positive things will happen. >> I tell myself everyday though, today is going to be a great day. >> Three months from now, I will be in better shape physically and emotionally. [MUSIC] >> I can just feel it. It's just when I'm taking care of myself that's the reward in itself. >> So that's the MeYou Health story. Let's go back to our diagram and see what we've learned from MeYou Health. We met Chris Carter, an entrepreneur with a growth mindset, who saw what he believed to be a big opportunity. How to use social networking to help us build healthier lives. He enlisted designers from Essential to work with him, to ask what is a big hairy question in this case. They used a variety of ethnographic techniques, many of them projective. Like journal writing and creating collages, to help them uncover deep needs. They used mind mapping to help them look for themes and patterns. And they then created personas to capture the differences across the individuals, and brainstormed to find solutions. Whether it was for the me time impoverished, the excuse makers, or the validation seekers. They found ways to help them lead healthier lives, in ways that seem small, but can add up, it turns out, to be really big. And they did this by asking, what is, focusing on the present to uncover hidden attitudes and needs. They then used those insights to ask, what if? And out of that process, created a whole host of new and innovative solutions.
