As I continue to explore issues in healthcare to find a direction for my project, I want to explore more examples of how design can be used in Healthcare. This week, I want to focus on disrupters in healthcare and primarily explore attitudes and concepts that are essential to successful design for health.
This talk by Timothy Prestero had some really interesting points around design thinking and how to design products that will actually work. The main point of the talk focuses on how you shouldn’t design for inspiration, but rather design for outcomes. What this means is that instead of designing something that would encourage manufacturers and businesses to adopt it, you should instead design with them and all stakeholders in mind. On one hand, this has a valuable lesson about design research and discovery, which is to understand and consider everyone involved with the issue you’re trying to solve but it is also an interesting point around actually achieving change in the world. I think this means that to achieve real change, you have to work with everyone, even those who may be contributing to the issues, as creating a solution that is supported has a much better chance of being sustained. I think this is really important for me to consider in this project, as there may be stakeholders in the problem I’m trying to solve that is actually contributing to the problem, but it’s important to understand and emphasise with them as well so that your solution has less chance of being blocked or shot down.
Another interesting point which I think will be important for me to consider is how the user actually views and uses the product, rather than just the intended way. It’s important to consider that a good product doesn’t just come down to the UX, but also the visuals and having a visual design that users want and trust is just as important as making sure it does what the users want. Also, it’s important to consider how the user will actually use the product, rather than the intended way to use it. It may be the case that the user accidentally uses a product incorrectly leading to a worse UX or worse results, and it’s important to remember that this is due to the product rather than the user. Making sure the intended way to use a product is the most obvious way to use it is incredibly important and will ensure the product is effective. I think these are two really interesting ideas that I will make sure to explore in my project, as I think they could be easily overlooked. For my project, I think this means that the visual design should also come from user research similar to the UX and that iteration and testing will be invaluable to creating a successful product.
Both of these points have been really useful to consider and have changed my idea of what “disrupting healthcare” means. I had initially thought it meant bringing in a product to push against the people causing friction in healthcare, and that doing this would make them change, but I can see now that the best way to disrupt and make changes is to work with and understand everyone involved, to ensure solutions that will produce genuine positive outcomes.
Goinvo is a great example of a healthcare disrupter. They have a lot typical healthcare project such as apps, reports, and studies etc., but what I found particularly interesting was their Open Source Health Design. This is a resource of patterns, code, scripts, graphics, and ideas, that are freely available to anyone for use, with the idea being that healthcare is too important a thing to be closed and commoditised. I think this is a great vision and a really useful resource which I’ll make sure to use for this project. In a world where healthcare is becoming more and more privatised, it’s great to see a company so willing to focus on making sure healthcare is available to all, and is doing a great job of disrupting healthcare in this way by changing attitudes towards what should and shouldn’t be profited from.
While this is a great resource, the idea of Open Source Health Care is an idea which I think I should consider how it fits into my project. When considering my users, it will be incredibly important for me to make sure whatever my product is is easily available and usable by all. For example, creating something which requires electricity wouldn’t be effective if the place it was designed for doesn’t have electricity. Making sure my product is universally usable and available to all the intended users is really important and making sure I fully understand the context of where my product will be used will be vital in making something which actually solves an issue. While Goinvo Open Source Health Care may be focussed on resources for designers, the idea of open source healthcare has helped me to start considering whether my project may be restricted to people through technological or accessibility limitations, and this will allow me to take the steps early on in my discovery phase to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Looking into disrupting healthcare has been really interesting at shaping my attitude to this project. It’s helped me to fully understand who I’ll need to talk to and consider when starting my project, the details I’ll need to consider, and making sure the product is easily accessed and used, and by considering all of these, will allow me to create something that disrupts healthcare by creating positive outcomes for not just my users, but everyone involved in it.