This week I attended a user experience conference on the topic of healthcare. Out of the talks, one that stood out for me was delivered by Jennifer Briselli, the Executive Vice President of Design Strategy at Mad*Pow. She talks about how we can use design tools and processes to shape services and products to those who use them rather than expecting people to learn to adapt to systems.
Here I want to highlight my favourite bits and learnings from her talk.
When we design for the average person. We’re designing for no one
Jen told a story from Todd’s book: The End of Average. The united airforce had a serious problem in the 1940s where pilots couldn’t control their planes and resulted in many accidents. What the airforce figured out with the help of scientists was that the design of the cockpit which was built with the average pilot in mind wasn’t suitable for most of the pilots. When they tried to compare the 4000 pilots (pre-selected as being relative average-sized) with the average pilot’s 10 body measurement dimensions, none conformed to all of those measurements. This means everyone had at least one body dimension that was outside the average range which made something difficult about the physical environment they have to work in.
“Any system that is designed around the average person is doomed to fail because there is no average and no person falls into what the average is defined as.” — Jen Briselli
So the airforce changed the design of these environments to fit the individual rather than the average. This led to adjustable seats, outfits, equipment, controls, and anything else that the pilot may need to work with. The result as one would expect: performance soared and accidents dropped. This change in the mindset of putting the person first rather than system then gets adopted in other areas and by other groups such as the military. These changes of systems being flexible and adaptable to the unique traits of the individual made it possible for a more diverse and larger group of people to contribute. We enable more people to do great things when we design systems to fit around people instead of expecting people to fit into our systems.
Leverage service design to tackle complex service and deliver meaningful experiences
Doing work in challenging circumstances within complex systems whose success or failure could have far-reaching implications—like healthcare.
Smart organisations today can’t expect individuals to fit into their system both patients and providers... This means we need to be more human-centered.
— Jen Briselli
Question: How can organisations orchestrate complex services and deliver meaningful and effective health experiences in an age of constant change and flux like in times of COVID and the post-pandemic world?
Answer: Service design
“The proper study of mankind is the study of design” —Herbert Simon
Human-centered design process is a variation of the following steps:
Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test
Below are areas to help us dive deeper into delivering service design.
Start with empathy—Understanding people as fully fleshed humans
Empathy is first-hand compassion and a deep understanding of the thoughts and experiences someone is having. To deliver effective services, we need to understand the individuals’ emotional, behavioural, and motivations.
Not patients but humans.
Most people who are patients don’t see themselves or define themselves as patients. We are more than our physical conditions or appearances. One can also replace the word ‘patients’ with any other occupation or defined role. We’re all ultimately human. This also means under different situations and spaces we may behave very differently.
Context impacts behaviour
How a person might behave in a setting like a grocery store likely would differ when they are at a hospital environment seeking consultation. Contexts shape behaviour and bring about different needs. We need to think about all the various contexts and environments where an individual might be completing a task using our service and what their behaviour and expectations might be at that moment.
Understanding triggers, motivations and barriers to determine where and how our services and products fit into people’s lives
We want to design services that fit into people’s lives, not force them to fit into our systems. In healthcare, this is not limited to patients but also the providers and carers that are all part of that experience journey.
How might we design systems that can be flexible and accommodate the various needs of individuals?
Use participatory design to uncover unmet needs and envisage new solutions
This means involving all the humans that play a role in designing the service future into the design process.
The deepest level of knowledge, the feelings that people might not be able to articulate in interviews can be teased out in generative research where individuals can express themselves through activities and play.
Jen talks about how often we designers use research methods that capture what people say and do through conversation and observations, and often we miss the deeper layers that reflect the individual’s true identity and aspirations.
She gave an example of conducting a participatory design session where participants were tasked to design a magical object that would solve all their problems and needs around their health.
People can get really creative when feeling empowered and given autonomy.
However, what gets created doesn’t matter. It’s how the participants talk about what they’ve built: the characteristics, the functions, and what the objects mean to them and represent. Then we use that information to determine how organisations can provide the same kind of usefulness and features that these magical objects have that would address problems these individuals are experiencing. A lot can get uncovered in these sessions that a normal conversational interview simply cannot. We can get a good glimpse of how people’s unique minds work, think, and see the world.
Sarah Fathallah wrote a nice piece to advocate participatory methods in design research and gave the following advantages:
- To get the information you wouldn’t get otherwise
- To minimize discomfort and strain
- To encourage participant engagement and well-being
- To shift power dynamics (My favourite point! When there’s a power imbalance such as when conducting interviews and observational research, the script and tone are usually dictated by one side—the researcher. Whereas in a collaborative setting such as participatory sessions, the power dynamic is more balanced and it becomes much easier for individuals to express themselves fully and thus help us researchers understand them better.)
Sarah’s last point and the deeper depth of learning that Jen described are enough to win me over and incorporate participatory design as part of my research arsenal. Jen advocates participatory design to be not only useful in understanding target audiences, but the approach is also a mindset that one can apply to any kind of internal team process and workflows.
Services as both performances AND products
Jen encourages us, designers and service providers to look at services as performances as well as products (as a service). Good service design means thinking about both sides of the coin: How is this service a performance and how is it a product?
She gave a great quote from Richard Buchanan:
“The ultimate purpose of service design is to give people the information and tools needed to act, according to their own wishes and needs.” —Richard Buchanan
Thinking about performance, Jen used a play as an analogy for service design. We need to understand all the parts of the service, not just the touchpoints of the target audience, but also the people that create the service experience, and all the processes that need to be involved behind the scenes.
Everyone designs
“Everybody in an organisation has the skills and toolkit needed to make their organisation more customer- or patient-centered and to do service design.” —Jen Briselli
I love that quote. Again, it takes the power away from ‘designers’ and roles that specifically deliver the service and empower any individual, regardless of their roles, within an organisation to create change and improve the overall service experience. Jen believes that we humans are all born with this foundational skill—Empathy:
- to listen and observe the experience of others and figure out what they need that they might not be able to express;
- have the curiosity to understand people, their challenges and needs; and
- have the compassion to create services that meet these needs.
“Service design is just a toolbox that helps us get there.” — Jen Briselli
How brilliant!
I know I’ll be revisiting her talk to remind myself of the above points. Service design is constantly evolving but the fundamental principles of:
- Design for the individual, not systems;
- Start with empathy;
- Involve individuals to be active participants in the design process and service creation;
- Consider all aspects of the experience, not just the end-users;
..will always remain relevant. And as service designers, we should keep those close to our hearts.
