Jinnie Hyojin Bae
← Work
BBC CHANGE
A WhatsApp chatbot concept that helps young adults make more sustainable lifestyle choices through personalised challenges, conversational guidance and feedback on their potential impact. Developed in response to a BBC brief exploring data-led public-service innovation for people aged 16–34.
ROLE Service Designer INDUSTRY Public Service / Sustainability DURATION 2019
Service Design User Research Service Proposition Data Visualisation
BBC CHANGE — BBCHANGE project overview
01 / THE CHALLENGE
Helping a younger audience turn concern into action
The BBC brief asked us to explore a new data-led service for a broad audience, with a core focus on people aged 16–34. It invited us to consider how the BBC could extend its public-service role beyond individually produced articles and videos.
We focused on sustainability: an area where concern about environmental issues did not always translate into everyday action.
The opportunity was to connect a complex global issue with choices people could understand and make within their own routines. The brief assumed that users could choose to share personal data, allowing us to explore how guidance might become more relevant to each person.
How might the BBC use personal data to help young adults make informed and achievable sustainable lifestyle choices?
02 / UNDERSTANDING DECISIONS
What makes an everyday change difficult?
We combined desk research with a workshop exploring how people make decisions, what influences their choices and when they seek reassurance.
Three tensions shaped the service direction.
Information without a clear next step. Participants described feeling overwhelmed by information and unsure how to act. Awareness alone did not make a decision easier.
Good intentions alongside established habits. People wanted to make sustainable choices while retaining aspects of the lifestyles they enjoyed. Change needed to feel manageable within their daily lives.
Willingness to share data when the value is clear. Participants were open to sharing information when they understood its purpose and could relate to the cause. The service needed to make the benefit of participation clear.
These findings shifted our focus towards helping people make a specific decision and follow through on it.
03 / FROM INSIGHTS TO SERVICE DECISIONS
Turning research into practical support
The research informed four connected service decisions.
Make the next action specific. To address uncertainty, the concept offered defined challenges with practical guidance. Users could focus on an action they understood rather than navigate sustainability as a whole.
Make the challenge personally relevant. Different interests and routines called for different starting points. The service proposed a choice of challenges, supported by users’ interests and participation history.
Support action over time. Reminders and conversational tips were designed to help users continue after their initial decision to participate.
Show why the action matters. Progress feedback and impact visualisations connected everyday choices with their potential environmental implications, at both individual and collective levels.
Together, these decisions shaped BBCHANGE as a service for taking action, supported by information at relevant moments.
04 / INTRODUCING BBCHANGE
A sustainability challenge supported through conversation
BBCHANGE proposes a guided experience delivered through WhatsApp. The interface concept combines challenge selection, a choice of coach persona, practical advice and reminders.
Example challenges include switching the milk used in coffee, trying a plant-based diet and reducing plastic waste.
Choose a starting point. Users select a challenge relevant to their interests and receive information about what it involves. The proposed coach personas give the conversational guidance a recognisable voice. They were illustrative elements of the concept.
Put the choice into practice. The chatbot provides prompts and practical tips during the challenge. These interactions are intended to keep the action present in everyday life and help users continue participating.
See progress and choose what comes next. The service brings together progress feedback and estimated impact to help users understand their contribution. Users can then select a further challenge, creating a proposed journey:
Discover → Select → Learn → Act with support → Review impact → Choose the next action
05 / HOW PERSONALISATION WORKS
Connecting shared information with useful guidance
The proposed data model linked personal interests, feedback and participation patterns with the support users received.
Interests could inform challenge selection. Participation patterns could help shape reminders, while feedback could inform the next suggested action.
Example user journeys illustrated different starting points, including a milk-switching challenge, a plant-based diet and reducing plastic waste.
The intended value exchange was more relevant support in return for information users chose to share. The data-flow model outlined this relationship at a concept level; detailed consent controls and data handling would need further development.
06 / MAKING IMPACT VISIBLE
Helping people see how small actions add up
The concept explored how to communicate the potential effect of an everyday change at different scales.
A milk-switching example compared the estimated implications of one person taking part with those of a larger group. This was intended to make collective contribution easier to understand and give individual participation a wider context.
The visualisation was a proposed feedback mechanism. Its figures represented illustrative estimates, rather than measured results from a live service.
07 / OUTCOME AND REFLECTION
Connecting decision-making research with a service proposition
BBCHANGE brought together research insights, a service journey, a data-flow model, example user scenarios and chatbot interface visualisations.
My contribution focused on research, stakeholder analysis, service proposition development and visual communication, helping connect the problem of everyday decision-making with a tangible service concept.
The project’s central proposition was that sustainability guidance could become more useful when it offered a relevant next step, support to continue and a clear explanation of why the action mattered.
The next stage would be to test whether people found the challenges achievable, whether reminders supported continued participation and whether impact feedback motivated them without adding pressure or guilt. The environmental estimates and data-sharing experience would also need validation.
Jinnie Hyojin Bae
← Work
BBC CHANGE
A WhatsApp chatbot concept that helps young adults make more sustainable lifestyle choices through personalised challenges, conversational guidance and feedback on their potential impact. Developed in response to a BBC brief exploring data-led public-service innovation for people aged 16–34.
ROLE Service Designer INDUSTRY Public Service / Sustainability DURATION 2019
Service Design User Research Service Proposition Data Visualisation
BBC CHANGE — BBCHANGE project overview
01 / THE CHALLENGE
Helping a younger audience turn concern into action
The BBC brief asked us to explore a new data-led service for a broad audience, with a core focus on people aged 16–34. It invited us to consider how the BBC could extend its public-service role beyond individually produced articles and videos.
We focused on sustainability: an area where concern about environmental issues did not always translate into everyday action.
The opportunity was to connect a complex global issue with choices people could understand and make within their own routines. The brief assumed that users could choose to share personal data, allowing us to explore how guidance might become more relevant to each person.
How might the BBC use personal data to help young adults make informed and achievable sustainable lifestyle choices?
02 / UNDERSTANDING DECISIONS
What makes an everyday change difficult?
We combined desk research with a workshop exploring how people make decisions, what influences their choices and when they seek reassurance.
Three tensions shaped the service direction.
Information without a clear next step. Participants described feeling overwhelmed by information and unsure how to act. Awareness alone did not make a decision easier.
Good intentions alongside established habits. People wanted to make sustainable choices while retaining aspects of the lifestyles they enjoyed. Change needed to feel manageable within their daily lives.
Willingness to share data when the value is clear. Participants were open to sharing information when they understood its purpose and could relate to the cause. The service needed to make the benefit of participation clear.
These findings shifted our focus towards helping people make a specific decision and follow through on it.
03 / FROM INSIGHTS TO SERVICE DECISIONS
Turning research into practical support
The research informed four connected service decisions.
Make the next action specific. To address uncertainty, the concept offered defined challenges with practical guidance. Users could focus on an action they understood rather than navigate sustainability as a whole.
Make the challenge personally relevant. Different interests and routines called for different starting points. The service proposed a choice of challenges, supported by users’ interests and participation history.
Support action over time. Reminders and conversational tips were designed to help users continue after their initial decision to participate.
Show why the action matters. Progress feedback and impact visualisations connected everyday choices with their potential environmental implications, at both individual and collective levels.
Together, these decisions shaped BBCHANGE as a service for taking action, supported by information at relevant moments.
04 / INTRODUCING BBCHANGE
A sustainability challenge supported through conversation
BBCHANGE proposes a guided experience delivered through WhatsApp. The interface concept combines challenge selection, a choice of coach persona, practical advice and reminders.
Example challenges include switching the milk used in coffee, trying a plant-based diet and reducing plastic waste.
Choose a starting point. Users select a challenge relevant to their interests and receive information about what it involves. The proposed coach personas give the conversational guidance a recognisable voice. They were illustrative elements of the concept.
Put the choice into practice. The chatbot provides prompts and practical tips during the challenge. These interactions are intended to keep the action present in everyday life and help users continue participating.
See progress and choose what comes next. The service brings together progress feedback and estimated impact to help users understand their contribution. Users can then select a further challenge, creating a proposed journey:
Discover → Select → Learn → Act with support → Review impact → Choose the next action
05 / HOW PERSONALISATION WORKS
Connecting shared information with useful guidance
The proposed data model linked personal interests, feedback and participation patterns with the support users received.
Interests could inform challenge selection. Participation patterns could help shape reminders, while feedback could inform the next suggested action.
Example user journeys illustrated different starting points, including a milk-switching challenge, a plant-based diet and reducing plastic waste.
The intended value exchange was more relevant support in return for information users chose to share. The data-flow model outlined this relationship at a concept level; detailed consent controls and data handling would need further development.
06 / MAKING IMPACT VISIBLE
Helping people see how small actions add up
The concept explored how to communicate the potential effect of an everyday change at different scales.
A milk-switching example compared the estimated implications of one person taking part with those of a larger group. This was intended to make collective contribution easier to understand and give individual participation a wider context.
The visualisation was a proposed feedback mechanism. Its figures represented illustrative estimates, rather than measured results from a live service.
07 / OUTCOME AND REFLECTION
Connecting decision-making research with a service proposition
BBCHANGE brought together research insights, a service journey, a data-flow model, example user scenarios and chatbot interface visualisations.
My contribution focused on research, stakeholder analysis, service proposition development and visual communication, helping connect the problem of everyday decision-making with a tangible service concept.
The project’s central proposition was that sustainability guidance could become more useful when it offered a relevant next step, support to continue and a clear explanation of why the action mattered.
The next stage would be to test whether people found the challenges achievable, whether reminders supported continued participation and whether impact feedback motivated them without adding pressure or guilt. The environmental estimates and data-sharing experience would also need validation.