Field Note 001
Clean Your Dirty Face
A reflection prompted by experiencing two very different approaches to wellness environments.
01 · Alicia A. Walters presents
WellnessInnovationLab
The business of wellness, under examination.
02
What happens in here?
The Wellness Innovation Lab is an experimental space for investigating the business of wellness: how wellness businesses create value, design services and experiences, operate, evolve and respond to a changing world.
We pull things apart
to see what else
they could become.
03
Put it under examination
Pick something up.
Choose something. Watch the system respond.
Area in focus
Membership
Relationship modelValueFrequencyPriceRetentionCapacityExperienceBelonging
Why does it work like this?
Does it have to?Lab principle · Break the rules
Who said innovation
has to happen
in that order?
Innovation rarely moves in a perfectly straight line. Change the sequence, follow the evidence and see where the work needs to go next.
Testing can expose something we don’t yet understand. Designing can send us back to discovery. New evidence can change what happens next.
The process can move. The evidence decides where.
Discover
Understand
Design
Test
Decide
This is one way.
Follow the evidence.Starting structureA useful starting point
Structure helps us begin. It doesn't remove the need to respond to what we learn.
What would have to be true for this to make sense?
Now test what happens.Methods are tools, not commandments.
Breaking a conventional sequence does not mean abandoning evidence, judgement or testing. We can question the method while remaining rigorous about what we learn.04
The dissection table
Take it apart.
Look again.
Put an area of the business on the table. Choose what you want to examine, then look at the questions, assumptions and connections it brings into view.
Any specimen. Any order. Nothing has to be examined first.SpecimenSpaceServicescape
This is a demonstration of questioning and experimentation, not Alicia’s full working approach.
05
Think it through
Think it
through.
Got something you're considering about the business of wellness?
Bring the thought, question or idea you're working through. This space will help you think it through, not make the decision for you.This space supports inquiry, not decisions. It does not provide medical, legal or financial advice. Where specialist expertise is needed, seek an appropriately qualified professional.
06
Currently in the Lab
Currently
in the Lab.
Questions and possibilities I’m currently thinking through. Pick one to see where the thinking has reached so far.
Under examination
When does membership create belonging, rather than another subscription?
Why I’m looking at this
Membership is often treated primarily as a recurring-payment model. I’m interested in what changes when the relationship and experience become part of the value.
What I’m questioning
Does membership automatically create loyalty or belonging, or do those things have to be deliberately designed into the experience?
What I don’t know yet
Whether customers actually value a sense of belonging in this context, what creates it, and whether it changes how they use or remain with a membership.
Status
Under examination.
Iteration 01
Starting with the job, not the membership
A membership may create value beyond recurring access or price when the relationship and experience themselves become valuable to the member.
But I don’t want to assume that belonging is the value.
Before considering how belonging might be designed into a wellness membership, I first want to understand what someone is actually hiring the membership to help them achieve.
They may be looking for a more regular wellness routine, an easier way to maintain self-care, less decision-making, better access, accountability or perhaps a stronger sense of connection. At this stage, these are possibilities rather than findings.
First question to investigate
What progress is someone actually trying to make when they choose a wellness membership rather than purchasing individual services?
07
Field Notes
Field
Notes.
Sometimes the Lab has to leave the Lab.
Field Notes are observations from the real world of wellness. Things I notice, question or find interesting enough to look at more closely, and what they might reveal about people, services, businesses and the way wellness is designed and delivered.
View Field Note →
Field Note 002
When age becomes the brief.
A reflection prompted by an industry discussion about how wellness is marketed to people aged 60+.
Field Note 003
When does a wellness treatment actually begin?
A field observation on the environment, transitions and service journey around a wellness treatment.
Emerging question: candidate, not active investigation
Field Notes observe, question and learn from the sector. They do not rate businesses or declare them good or bad.
08
Findings
So, what are
we learning?
Not everything noticed in the Lab becomes a finding. Ideas move through different levels of evidence as they are questioned, tested and developed.
Evidence state
Observation
Something noticed. Useful as a starting point, not a conclusion.
Possible connections: investigation · field note · experimentWe don’t turn an interesting observation into a fact just because we like it.
09
From the Lab
Some things
leave the Lab.
Some questions can only move forward when they meet the real world.
This is where I share selected work emerging from the Lab.
Questions, observations, research and experiments can develop in different directions. Some become concepts, prototypes, methodologies, services, projects or new directions. Others change, pause or go no further.
I share selected parts of that journey so you can see how I investigate problems, challenge assumptions, test ideas and learn from what happens, and consider what those lessons might mean for your own work.
Possible formPrototype
“Work emerging from the Lab may take the form of a prototype made to be tested.”
Work can evolve, change, pause or be abandoned. It may also lead to further research, a prototype, methodology, service, new question or transferable learning. These are legitimate directions, not sequential stages. Field Observation 001 is currently shared as an observation rather than one of these outcome states.
Evolve Work continues and develops further. Shown here as an explanation of legitimate outcomes, not as the status of Field Observation 001 or a project.
Field Observation 001 is the first genuine observation shared from the Lab, with its source, status and limits stated openly. The forms above continue to explain other ways work may emerge. When a piece of work is published under a form, that form will show how many pieces are shared and open their public records, including selected thinking, evidence, changes and learning. Only genuine work will be added, with its status and limits stated honestly.
10
Visitor reflection
What has your time
in the Lab got you thinking about?
Your reflectionChoose what’s on your mind
The question can be your starting point.
You don’t need to arrive with the answer.
You can arrive with the question.11
Exit the Lab
The business of wellness
doesn’t have to look
like it does today.
What might it become?