Building in public: understanding our users' needs
December 13, 2024
At Air Aware Labs we hugely value our users and want to understand their goals and needs as deeply as we can. We are building in the market for personalised environmental health, and we are only starting to scratch the surface of the opportunity for impact.
We are now on our third round of user research and engagement. Before we launched our Strava integration in April, we learnt from our elite athletes' panel and from engaging with over 60 families. Then in the build up to our AirTrack launch, we interviewed users extensively, then created a panel for in depth user testing.
En route to AirTrack mobile app
Now we have kicked off our preparations for a mobile app, we have entered another round of deep engagement. Before we even have a beta to test, we are making sure we understand:
- our current users' goals and needs through interviews and surveys;
- the likely shape of our future user base through market research.
Here we dive into our emerging findings from the latter process.
The results are in...
We surveyed 212 people to understand their levels of knowledge and concern about air pollution, what might be driving that concern and their willingness to download and potentially pay for an app. The results were fascinating:
- while knowledge of air pollution was balanced, 83% expressed concern about it - this follows a similar pattern to our first ever survey
- we didn't target the survey on people with health conditions, but 40% responded that they or a loved one had asthma
- the groups most likely to engage with our air quality proposition were those who already use health and fitness apps
- no surprises that cyclists and runners were particularly keen to engage with a fully featured AQ tracking app
- there were only small differences between genders, age groups and even people with health conditions when it came to interest in an app (a bigger survey might tell us more)
Alongside our engagement with current users, this is giving us a wealth of understanding to help us build a product that people need and love. We can't wait for the new year when we start to test out the app!
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