Moon Creative Lab: Kampo Labo
FALL 2021
Product Designer, Research Synthesis Lead
ROLE
User Research, Product Strategy, Brand Identity
DISCIPLINE
Designers: Joanne Chuang, Jess Huang, Angel Xu
Project Mentors: Conner Manuel, Rafi Hanafiah
TEAM
September 2021 — December 2021
TIMELINE
CONTEXT
Western medicine’s priority is typically to treat illnesses when people experience pain and symptoms, while Eastern (typically referring to Eastern Asian) medicine usually focuses on preventative care and individuals’ holistic health through the harmony of their physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. An internal team at Moon Creative Lab saw a space for opportunity here: if more people in the West (North America being the focus here) had knowledge about and access to Eastern medicinal practices, could an entirely new realm of health that synthesized parts from both hemispheres be created? Here, Moon’s Chief Creative Officer Mike Peng and Global Head of Engineering Adam Bildersee came to us with the idea that a business involving a traditional Japanese medicine called Kampo could demystify conceptions of Eastern medicine in North America. To us, they asked:
How might we bring together the best of the East and the West?
We approached this through the lens of Kampo and the philosophy of mental and physical harmony.
FINAL SOLUTION
A business proposal consisting of a signature Kampo product, developed in collaboration by Kampo practitioners and scientists, paired with a marketing and branding strategy, the prototype of the product’s packaging, and the prototype of a digital app interface that guides people on their journey with Kampo.
RESEARCH
RESEARCH GOALS
First, we set a few goals for our research to guide what learnings we sought out about people’s experiences with Eastern medicine and their lifestyle philosophies that led them to pursue things like supplements and alternative medicines (or not).
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
To lay the groundwork for our research, our team started by conducting secondary research on twelve companies with missions and products related to some aspect of Eastern medicine. We researched other Kampo makers; many companies that offered supplements or herbal products, like Seed and Moon Juice; and companies that provided mindfulness services like Down Dog and Headspace, the conceptual origins of which are located in Eastern and overall Asian cultures. Looking into the product, mission, language, and public perception of these companies gave us a clearer idea of what products, missions, and marketing were effective and garnered public receptivity.
USER RESEARCH: SURVEYS
We conducted seven interviews with users who answered our survey, aiming to gather deeper insights on their beliefs about medicine and supplements, look at what guided their lifestyles, and explore users’ openness to learning about and using Kampo.
At this point in our process, our clients at Moon felt confident that the research we had been doing was solid but not surprising; in conducting interviews, they encouraged us to look for compelling stories, controversial opinions that could propel our own ideas beyond the scope of the expected. So, when we held interviews, we wanted conversations to take place as organically as possible, and from there conversations flowed about people’s childhood experiences with medicine, their absolute disbelief in supplements, and how their lifestyle choices were made to support their broader dreams in life.
USER RESEARCH: INTERVIEWS
We designed a survey to learn about a broad range of individuals’ lifestyle habits, views around medicine and supplements, and perceptions of Eastern medicine. We received over 400 responses, learning that most people had limited (if any) knowledge about different forms of Eastern medicine — Kampo seemed particularly obscure; those who used it faced barriers like accessibility of materials, cost, and language; and people who used Eastern medicines found it effective but very gradual in its effects.
Identify users' motivations, desires, and needs with medicines and supplements.
Identify (and dive deeper into) people's awareness + openness about Kampo.
Identify barriers that prevent more people from learning about and using Kampo.
Explore more about people’s lifestyles and what influences their lifestyles.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
We recorded our observations from our interviews and surveys on sticky notes. We identified some common themes and concepts from our notes, like comments users had made about only wanting to ingest supplements with natural ingredients, or marketing and packaging style making a difference in how legitimate a product seemed. We reorganized our notes in clusters based on these themes — culture, legitimacy and trustworthiness, naturalness, branding and packaging, concerns, lifestyle motivators, and Eastern philosophy on health and balance — to highlight user priorities and key themes going forward.
USER PERSONAS
Each of the four consultants on our team created a user persona, drawing from the people we encountered in our research, in efforts to solidify the types of people that could be relevant to consider in our final proposals. Our four personas each represented an important subgroup of users that had different needs for and interpretations of Kampo. I designed George’s persona:
Trina, the skeptic who doesn’t believe in forms of medicine alternative to Western treatments
Annie, who grew up with Eastern medicine but no longer has access to it
Kevin, who wants to get back in touch with his Asian heritage but isn’t sure how to
George, the chronic illness patient who’s frustrated by Western symptomatic treatment and doctors’ lack of transparency
AFFINITY MAPPING
REFRAMING THE SCOPE
With each of our personas reflecting an important user demographic, we decided it would be a fitting time to reframe our problem scope before jumping into ideation. For each persona, we generated a new set of “How Might We…?” questions that were applicable to their situations. Seeing a few common threads between our new questions, we categorized each HMW under one of four broader categories that we found to be common themes:
Culture (e.g., reconnecting with one’s cultural heritage)
Education (e.g., learning about Kampo and traditional Eastern medicines)
Convenience (e.g., ease and efficiency of medicinal consumption)
Daily lifestyle habits
We used some HMWs from each category of question to guide our ideation process with more intentional directions, including a few of mine, such as:
IDEATION
Mike and Adam stressed to us the importance of being bold in our ideation, a “go big or go home” mentality. We each individually used the Crazy Eights strategy to brainstorm ideas that would connect to our overarching themes of culture, education, lifestyle, and convenience and address our personas’ pain points, taking liberties to be as extravagant or elaborate as possible. My own ideas ranged from a Kampo-themed cafe, where all menu items had some type of Kampo incorporated into them, to retreats where users traveled to different locations to work with various Kampo practitioners. A few of my ideas were:
Kampo farmers’ market, where each stall sells some kind of ingredient and practitioners can converse with people about their purposes and benefits
Kampo gummies/snacks infused with different Kampo ingredients
Physical store, like Glossier but for Kampo products
PROTOTYPING & ITERATION
We decided on four bold, dramatic ideas that addressed our users’ pain points and needs and each tied into one or more of our core themes of culture, education, convenience, and lifestyle. Each of us sketch low-fidelity prototypes of one idea, mine of the Kampo farmers’ market in the bottom left:
INITIAL SOLUTIONS
Mike and Adam were impressed that we’d taken leaps with regards to how large-scale our ideas were; now, they presented us with a new challenge: creating a feasible product and business model, drawing from the best elements of each of our four big ideas. They recommended that we do this while selecting one of our personas as our “hero persona,” the user who would be hardest but still possible to convince to engage with our signature product. We decided that George, my persona who suffered from chronic pain and illness, was our hero: Annie and Kevin already wanted to reconnect with either their past or their heritage, and would willingly try Kampo; Trina would be impossible to convince; and George didn’t have much knowledge about Eastern medicine but was fed up enough with her current doctors and style of treatment that she could be persuaded.We drew out components of each big idea that would effectively address George’s needs, which we then incorporated into a single experience:
DISTILLING OUR DESIGNS: A COHESIVE SINGULAR PROPOSAL
From there, we created a series of increasingly comprehensive iterations of a “signature Kampo product” that would be offered. To make the prototyping process more efficient, our team split our efforts marketing and product: two of my teammates, Joanne and Angel, worked on designing the physical packaging and UI/UX for the app, while I, along with my colleague Jess Huang, worked on the marketing strategy, brand identity, and design guide for the business, which we named Kampo Labo.
PROPOSED SOLUTION & IMPACT
Our final deliverable was a business proposal that consisted of three main components: a marketing and brand strategy, a prototype for physical product packaging, and a prototype for a digital app interface. We hoped that these intertwined components would provide a strong basis for multiple elements of a business, giving Moon somewhere to start and expand from.
As a venture studio, Moon Creative Lab sought to explore the potential that a Kampo-focused business and product could have in North American markets. They were impressed with the breadth of our proposal, and they’ll keep in touch with us as they begin efforts to initiate Kampo Labo.
REFLECTIONS
My first project as a member of Berkeley Innovation was enriching, exciting, and a lot of fun. I (and everyone else on the team, for that matter), had a personal interest in and connection to traditional Eastern medicine, and this specific project opened up a chance for me to explore and question how my cultural background tied in with ethics, commodification, and being interwoven into new spaces.
Our team was highly aware that the nature of our project posed a fine line between cultural appropriation and genuinely wanting to make Eastern medicine and philosophies more accessible to a broader audience. Throughout the course of our project, we wanted to honor Japanese culture and Kampo practices; we made sure that we were interviewing Kampo practitioners and people who were familiar with traditional Eastern medicines and built our final proposals by making sure they would continue to incorporate feedback from these individuals. By sharing our experiences and talking to people with a range of experiences and perceptions revolving around Eastern medicine, herbal supplements, and lifestyles in general, our team expanded our understanding of why people used certain types of medicine, led their lives in specific directions, and how all of this reflected their fundamental beliefs.
A major factor in my growth as a designer was the support from our clients at Moon — Mike and Adam pushed us beyond doing high-quality research and ideation to pull out extreme opinions, storytell using those, and come up with wild ideas before scaling back our final proposal to something more realistic. Collaborating with Moon and my wonderful teammates made my first semester in Berkeley Innovation fulfilling and appreciative of the community I now have — here’s to future semesters like this one.