Health Group, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

It always begins with listening. There is no project that DDB Issues & Advocacy takes on — whether online or off — that does not include listening first to those we want to reach and engage. We are developing user experiences that will encourage and enable people to take the actions we wish them to take. And we can’t design that experience without knowing precisely what motivates them. And we can’t understand those motivations unless we take the time to listen.

The Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wanted us to do just that — listen to what people were saying about the social determinants of health and develop recommendations for the creation of an online community. So, we spent a few weeks aggregating and analyzing social media content and thinking about where those users were and where we wanted them to go.