honest behavior
How might we help Honest Company achieve its sustainability goals to be a purpose driven company in the baby care industry?
Designed as part a 10-week Interdisciplinary Studio 1: Design Leadership we worked to transition The Honest Company's business practices to reflect its purpose-driven values. The challenge was to successfully incorporate behavior change factors into a sustainable business model, starting with identifying companies that are committed to change and working with that company to evolve their business models in order to stay relevant.
TEAM: Alex Fogleman, Jordanna Coutinho, Haleemah Sadiah
TIMELINE: September - November 2018
FIELDS: Contextual Research, Business Strategy, Behavior Change
Process
We followed The Net Positive Maturity Model for our design process of this project. The model recognizes that net positive is a journey and aims to support businesses to review and identify steps along this journey through three phases- Principles, Methodology, and Application.
The Maturity Model provides practitioners with a tool to assess current approaches against progress levels attributed to key elements of each Guiding Principle. The Principles include:
Material: Are you focusing on what matters most?
Systematic: Are you influencing change across entire systems?
Regenerative: Are you creating long-term, sustained and absolute impact?
Transparent: Are you sharing progress openly and honestly?
The model also helped in identifying gaps and opportunities to take next steps and served as a directional guidance to support the Honest Company's efforts toward sustainable business benefits.
MATURITY MODEL
Toolkit to Assess and Identify Steps
WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE, & HOW DO WE TALK ABOUT IT?
APPLICATION
Demonstration & Communication
WHAT ARE WE AIMING FOR?
PRINCIPLES
Aspirations & Comments
HOW WILL WE GET THERE?
METHODOLOGY
Parameters to design for, measure, and monitor Net Positive Impact
Research Questions
How does behavior change factor into a sustainable business model?
How do you identify companies that are committed to change?
How do you help companies evolve their business models to stay relevant?
How do you help a company become more of what it wants to be?
Opportunity Statement
The opportunity lies in helping the Honest Company meet its sustainability goals through streamlining its current product lines and/or introducing a new product line that follows proper life cycle analysis to enhance transparency throughout the brand, making use of Honest Company’s digital presence to push its transparency initiatives and increase brand integrity in order to convert more “non- customers”, and enabling the brand and products to grow with its user.
Problem Statement
Birthed from the detrimental impacts of diaper use on the planet, there is currently a greater diaper debate unfolding with the rise in conscious consumption. However, consumers are still deterred by the physical intimacy and time required to switch from disposable to cloth diapers.
Application
Design Solution
I got you babe! Moving forward with our data and insights, we saw that although there was a budding conversation about the benefits of reusable diapers amongst young mothers, there was still a clear distinction in what they would rather use versus what they do use. Obstacles preventing this behavior change were most often time, convenience, fixed habits and lastly perceptions of hygiene from intimate physical handling.
Honest would start by addressing these barriers to behavior change with it’s “ I Got You Babe” Campaign. The campaign would be launched in two phases. In the initial phase Honest would start by generating awareness around reusable diapers,using its already strongly established digital presence to provide its followers with bite sized nuggets of wisdom on its social media platforms, host city wide workshops and events around helping consumers transition to reusable diapers use while calling attention to this campaign with attractive, fun, curiosity inciting billboards. Honest would also use its blog to redirect more consumers to the campaign, as would its social media marketing and other collateral.
Once consumers have been sufficiently convinced, they can log onto the app to either purchase Honest Company’s new reusable diaper product or subscribe to the “ I got you babe” service.
Honest Company’s city based reusable diaper service, allows customers to buy reusable diapers, and have the option to have their dirty diapers picked up from their doorstep and/or drop their dirty diapers off at a centralized location.
Our entire process for the “I got you babe” campaign was approached with deep research, thoughtful analysis, and a systems thinking mindset that led to an innovative solution for the people, planet, and profit.
View our Service Blueprint
Methodology
Analysis
Following secondary research, we conducted interviews from our target audience and industry stakeholders which were then analyzed through many tools and frameworks to help us understand how we will reach our goals, frame our insights, and guide our strategy. They included: AUUDIO analysis, sSWOT, The ZAG, Stakeholder Engagement Map, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Customer Journey Map, and four Blue Ocean Strategy Tools - ERRC, Strategy Canvas, 3 Tiers of Non-Customers, 4 Hurdles to Strategy Execution. We then crafted a cultural probe a prototyped with 45 participants, reflecting on our insights for the application phase.
View our AUUDIO
Cultural Probe Prototype
Cultural Probe Execution
Insights
Principles
Research
In order to better understand what we should aiming for, we narrow our scope by identifying four Sustainable Development Goals to align our project goals with. From there, we researched Honest Company’s primary competitors- creating competitor personas, as well as identifying our target audience. Through continuing secondary research, we were able to identify Honest Company’s challenges in the field of sustainability, industry certifications, and statistics on waste in the diaper industry. These findings helped clarify what Honest Company is and should aspire to- paving a clearer path for the methodologies phase.
Competitor Personas
Secondary Research
Within the home and personal care product industry, The Honest Company stands out as a brand trying to be more purpose driven. Even though Honest was started as a purpose driven company, it falls into the gap between being a fully integrated company like Mrs. Meyers, or a purpose driven company like Method. There is a strong dissonance between their sustainability goals and their current business practices. We aim to design sustainable design practices that will help them achieve their goals.
