Week 7

Final work Progress

Data Gathering

As said at last week's page, we were parallelly gathering data using two different methods:

Surveys, to get a broader opinion. We tried to survey people in Arequipa from ages 18 to 65, as this are the economically active people. However, it was very difficult for us to contact a lot of people over 30, so it is important to mention that the survey data might be skewed.
Interviews to potential clients, to get a more specialized opinion. Of course, not as many interviews as surveys were going to be made, but they can be a very rich information source. We also tried to intervew people in Arequipa from ages 18 to 65.

Data Analysis

Firstly, we are going to analyse the surveys.

Some results were briefly and partially discussed at week 6.

We start with the results taking into consideration the whole sample.

Here we are showing the age groups of the surveyed people.

As you can see, most people belong in the 18* to 30 years old range, so that's why we argue that the data might be skewed for the whole of Arequipa.

Do you believe that, in Arequipa city, are citizens informed enough regarding solar radiation consequences?

Most people replied that they didn't believe so. This goes hand in hand with the data acquired during the interviews, where pretty much all people who got interviewed said they feel that the government doesn't do anything regarding this issue.

Do you check the local UV ray index before sun exposure?

We expected a lower value of people checking this data: a little bit over 18% of people surveyed check the UV Ray index before leaving their house.

In the interviews we also learnt that most people have no idea about the UV ray indexes, so it makes sense that a lot of people don't check something they had no idea about.

Are you conscious about the solar radiation effects?

Not surprisingly, most people in Arequipa know about the issue. In the survey we do not get an idea into how deep their knowledge is (this can and will be checked with the interviews), however it is good to know that most people know at least something about how dangerous sun exposure can be.

It is important to us as well that every citizen in Arequipa knows about the issue, so we think that the 8.8% of people who isn't conscious about sun exposure consequences should be lower.

(If surveyed person doesn't use any product to protect his/her skin) Why do you believe you haven't used any product to protect your skin?

Almost every person that knows about the issue but hasn't used any products says they do so because they forget about it, they're lazy within that aspect or that they consider it takes too much time (this was extracted from an interview in particular, where the interviewed person knew a lot about the problem but didn't use any solar skin protection products).

Some people don't protect their skin because they don't have much solar exposure. This is usually the case of those people that work remotely or stay in office most of their day.

Now, we are going to analyze data separating it by sex.

The analysis was done using jupyter notebook and different python scripts.

On the left, we have the importance against UV rays by men, and on the right by women. The scale went from 1 to 5.

As it can be seen, a higher number of females believe this is a very very important problem (a 5 on the scale), whereas the males, whilst it's still most of them, it's on a lower proportion when compared with the females (60% vs 77%).

This makes us argue that males can be more impacted by this issue on the longterm as they don't think it as important as females do.

Here, we are proportionally checking the products used for sun protection in both males (left) and females (right).

Almost all women who protect themselves against the sun use sunscreen. On males the number is high, a little bit over 80%, but it is not as high as with the females.

The use of hats, sombreros and sunglasses are higher on males than females, with over 50% of males using hats and sunglasses. The number is not as high on women, however, pretty much all of them are already protected with sunscreen, which is the product that offers the most protection.

Regarding the frequency of use, we see that sunglasses are not a choice for most women, with over 50% of them saying they don't use them, and only 6% of them saying they used it daily.

Males, on the other hand, tend to use sunglasses more, with a bit over 25% of them using them daily, and only 37% of them never using them. This could be, however, more for style purposes than protection against the sun.

Regarding hat usage, males (left) and females (right) have similar frequency patterns, with females slightly using hats more than men (21% of women use it daily, 13% of men use it daily).

Sunscreen usage is where the main difference is at.

On the left, we can see that 64% of females use sunscreen on a daily basis, and only 6% of them never use it. This is a very good habit.

However, when looking at the male data, only 26% of them use it daily, a number way to far off the female proportion, and almost 16% of men never use sunscreen.

This is a worrying pattern that shows that men tend to not protect their skin against the sun as much as their female counterparts.

Finally, to finish supporting the idea that males are more affected by UV ray exposure than females, we present the following graphs.

We asked the surveyed people to tell us if they had used ANY product to protect their skin against the sun within the last couple of days. This was made with the attempt to see if said person has the habit of protecting his or herself against the sun.

Only 21% of the women surveyed said they didn't. Whilst we believe this number is a bit high, it could certainly have been higher, and it is good to know that almost 4 in every 5 women protect their skin.

However, within men, the number rises to almost 40%. Almost half of the males surveyed don't protect their skin regularly, which is worrying and supports our hypothesis that men are more affected than women.

Interviews

The main conclusions we got from the interviews are as follows:

People from socioeconomic levels D or E don't use any kind of protection due to their economical situation.
In general, people from D or E socioeconomic levels are not very invested in the problem because they have other priorities. Most of these people work daily to have something to eat that same day, so skin protection is for sure not on the top of their list.
Most people (practically everyone) don't know what the Fitzpatrick scale is. However, most people know that people with bright skin complexity are more likely to burn (and not tan) than people with dark skin complexity.
Some people don't use sunglasses because they require glasses in their day to day lives.
Most people that apply sunscreen on themselves only do so on their face and not on the rest of the body that may be exposed. Also, most people don't apply sunscreen again after two to three hours have gone by.
Males tend to protect themselves less against the sun than females.
Most people have no idea about the UV index scale. Even less people are conscious about how high the UV indexes get in Arequipa.

Main insights found

We should focus more in people in A, B and C socioeconomic levels, as those in the D and E levels do not pay that much importance to this problem.
Women are more conscious about UV ray skin exposure than men. This can be seen in the protection habits that women have that men don't have as much (e.g. sunscreen usage). Also, we've seen that men do not think the problem is as important as women, but in general everyone thinks the problem has a certain degree of importance.
Whilst it's true that men use hats and sunglasses more than women, we have reasons to believe this is mainly due to aesthetic purposes. More studies should be done regarding that aspect.
Most people, regardless of sex, that know about the dangers of sun exposure but do not do anything to protect themselves mainly don't do it because of laziness or the fact that they forgot about it.
Almost 40% of men that know about the dangers of sun exposure don't regularly protect themselves against it.
It seems that most people have some idea that, depending on your skin tone, you might need more or less protection against the sun.
There is a small group of people that, even though they are conscious about the dangers of sun exposure and having economical accessibility, don't protect their skin because the sun exposure they have is close to none. This is what happens with people who work remotely or stay in office most of their time.
Most people have no idea about the UV index scale. Even less people are conscious about how high the UV indexes get in Arequipa.

Customer Empathy Map

Feel and do:

Sun is dangerous.
Government doesn't do enough to make people aware.

Hear:

"You have to protect yourself against the sun".
None of his male friends comment about how they protect against sun radiation.

See:

No advertisement motivating him to protect himself against the sun.

Say and do:

Doesn't protect himself against sun radiation.
Doesn't make any comments about the sun to any acquiantance.

Pains:

Feeling sensation due not protecting himself because of laziness.
Indifference to "common" situations such as insolation.

Gains:

Wants to be somehow protected against the sun (because he knows the consequences of not doing so).
Evade direct sun exposure.

Talking about the problem

After the previous analysis, we decided to define the problem as follows:

Very high exposure to UV rays.

Trying to segment it a bit more, we define our action focus as follows:

Dermatological issues in males that live in Arequipa city due to lack of habits and skin protection culture.

With this, we are also getting a closer client segmentation. Our client would be described as follows:

Male.
Lives in Arequipa city.
Belongs to socioeconomical levels A, B, C.
Has some sort of idea of the damages caused by sun exposure.
Even though he is conscious, he doesn't do much (if any) to protect himself against sun exposure.
Spends a good part of his day outside, being exposed to the sun.

We propose the following problem tree in an attempt to explain the causes and consequences of our issue.

Our problem, as we have defined it, is very high exposure to UV rays.

The causes are as follows:

The ozone layer "hole".
The sun itself.

The effects or consequences we have considered are:

Headaches.
Stress and irritability.
Tiredness.
Ocular issues such as eye irritation.
Dermatological issues such as:
- Skin stains.
- Insolation.
- Allergies.
- Melanoma / skin cancer.

Laboratory - 3D Printer

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