1) Pick a segment. The segment I chose are new vegans (have been vegan for less than a year) between the ages 18-29. I chose this segment as most people following a vegan diet report going vegan in their 20s.
2) Find three people who would fit that segment and arrange to interview them. For the interviews, I sat down with a 23 year old man who has been vegan for 3 months, a 29 year old woman who has been vegan for 7 months, and a 19 year old woman for has been vegan for 2 weeks.
3) Begin with need awareness. The 23 year old man is most aware of this need when he is hungry and doesn't have any food at home. This puts a pressure on his grocery trips as he wants to be in and out of the store as quickly as possible. When he shops hungry, he finds it more irritating reading over product ingredient lists and usually gives in to repurchasing the same products repeatedly. The 29 year old woman becomes most aware of this need when she conducts her weekly meal planning. She doesn't like to eat the same meals very often and likes to incorporate new dishes each week. When she is researching recipes online to use for that week's meal plan, she has to make adjustments for which products are suitable and obtainable and that can cause some frustration when she can't find what she needs. The 19 year old woman is aware of her need whenever she has to think about food. She typically sticks to certified vegan food or foods that have very simplistic ingredients to save time, but wants to try making more complex dishes with other products.
4) Move to information search. For the 23 year old man, the first thing he does is think about what he can eat. He goes over a mental list in his head of products that he's recently eaten and if he'll want to eat them again. When he is at the grocery store, he first goes to the products he is familiar with. When he thinks about trying a different product, he instantly goes to the ingredient list on the label and scans it for a "contains milk and/or eggs" label. For the 29 year old woman, the first thing she does is turn to Google and searches the product's name followed by "is it vegan?" She looks for search results on recently updated vegan blogs or lists. Date is very important so that it's most likely accurate information. For the 19 year old woman, she uses her phone to Google if her local grocery store carries a certain certified vegan product. As she typically buys the same products, but wants to break out of this habit, she's been turning to Peta's list of "accidentally vegan foods" to look for common staples in many easy meals.
5) Report the findings of your research. In these 3 interviews, I've learned that these new vegans are all facing issues dealing with obtaining quick, reliable information about which food products they can eat that don't carry the certified vegan label. 2 out of the 3 turn to Google to search for vegan blogs that discuss products they can use and find in their local grocery stores, a process they say is helpful, but can be a bit time consuming if they wish to follow a more challenging recipe. All 3 people expressed a frustration with long, complicated ingredient lists as they aren't yet familiar with many non-safe ingredients.
6) Draw conclusions. This segment is very aware of their need, especially when faced with choosing which products to purchase at the grocery store. This segment has adopted habits to help answer this need, but they are not the most efficient solutions and still result in some frustration at times. As they are still new in their transition to a vegan diet, their lack of knowledge about ambiguous ingredients in staple food products leads them to spending more time searching on Google for answers.
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