Phase one: fact finding
The starting point for the Design Council team was a day at the Park Wood estate. The team spent time getting a feel for the area, examining the local demographic and health data and, most importantly, recruiting a group of residents to work with.
A shortlist of potential participants emerged, six of whom were visited in their homes over a two-day period.
During their visit from a Design Council researcher, participants took part in a series of exercises to help establish their relationship with activity and fitness. They were asked to map out a day’s activities as a time line, and choose flashcards depicting activities they currently do, ones they’d like to do and one’s they’d never do.
‘We also carried out an activity audit on people’s homes by asking them to show us objects such as disused tennis rackets and bikes, to find out how much activity was actually going on,’ explains Jennie Winhall, part of the Design Council team.
At the end of the session, researchers spent an hour with participants on an activity that they currently did, hoping to understand what carrying out everyday activities actually meant in terms of organisation and experience.
From these sessions, the researchers began to build up a picture of the kinds of people living in Park Wood: those who had always enjoyed healthy levels of activity but had become inactive through illness, those for whom the day-to-day pressures of life made it difficult to find time to exercise and others who continued to enjoy a healthy and motivated lifestyle.
To complete the picture, the team held a series of workshops with local stakeholders, such as the community support officer, youth club leaders, a local vicar and a representative from Age Concern, and asked them to sketch out other familiar profiles missing from the initial research. This group was also asked to brainstorm ideas for motivating individuals to increase activity.
This initial research showed that for Park Wood residents there are many barriers to being healthy and living an active life, though many of these barriers are based on perceptions rather than actual fact. To be successful, the Open Health team would have to find ways to overcome these barriers (real or otherwise) and draw inspiration from those residents who do integrate activity into their everyday lives.
The situations of five of the more active residents helped to uncover the motivating factors that might drive the new initiative. Two residents were motivated by hobbies and interests (archaeology and gardening) that resulted in them being active without feeling like they were actually doing exercise. One of the residents had been thinking of starting a walking group and 
two residents met regularly with a small group of friends, all of whom suffer from mobility issues of one kind or another. ‘We began to see that a successful system for activity might harness people’s existing interests and passions,’ says Murray, ‘could offer space and support for enterprising individuals to organise activities and that groups of like-minded people help to support and motivate one another.’
