Health Experience Design 2021

How might we foster an inspiring and supportive environment to combat teen vaping addiction over Instagram DMs? In 2019, 28% of high school students reported vaping in the past month, up 7% from the year prior. More than 5 million youth reported having used e-cigarettes in the past 20 days, and nearly 1 million reported daily use. It is no secret that teen vaping is an epidemic. There is a clear need to give engaging, meaningful support to teens who are addicted to nicotine through vaping, many of whom would actually like to stop but have few options for where to go for help. Instagram DMs offer the opportunity to meet teens who vape where they already are, in readiness and in social nature, to deliver evidence-based treatment to engage young vapers looking to quit. In this session learn how Hopelab, behavior change strategists at Rescue Agency , and scientists at the University of California San Francisco partnered to design an intervention not just for teens, but with teens. Introduced by Senior Director of Research, Dr. Danielle Ramo, Design Lead Robin Hayashi, will share the process of creating a unique prototype on Instagram to support and engage young vapers looking to quit through Instagram DMs. They will share how this prototype was inspired by a well-tested smoking-cessation intervention model on Facebook that provided a clinical foundation for an engaging, empathetic, and human-centered program to help teens quit vaping. They will talk through the opportunities and challenges of designing a supportive environment with a true human touch in a digital space ripe with patient opportunity. What assumptions were challenged in the process of designing for a new generation of nicotine users, who are grappling with the unique stressors of adolescence in 2020? Listen to what we learned about co-creating every step of the way with our partners and end users, in order to design a clear supportive path to quit vaping.