The Embedded Designer: The Next Big Step for Healthcare Systems
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Abstract
Premise:
As much as it is the surgeon’s job to perform surgery, the nurse’s job to nurse patients back to health, and the pharmacist’s job to manage medications, there is one position still making its way into the annals of healthcare workers: the designer. Designers have the unique skill sets to realize the vision of improved systems, so why aren’t there more designers working in the healthcare arena?
Currently, very little in healthcare is deliberately designed. Ad hoc, inefficient and unsafe design methods abound. The bar for design standards is low compared to other industries. Manufacturers of medical technologies only now understand the importance of user-centered design and human factors, prompted by the FDA’s design requirements for regulatory approval.
Patients and practitioners are people, and people expect good design in the technology they use. Technology should reflect human values; it should be comprehensible, usable, safe, and social. Though we have a long way to go, this is beginning to happen. However, many that recognize the value of design still rely on freelance designers, and this is not enough.
Design co-founders have created billions of dollars in value in the start-up world (flickr, YouTube, Etsy, Vimeo, Instagram). We have this opportunity in healthcare. But designers need to be exposed to healthcare environments, embedded in permanent, in-house positions so they are able to fully understand the complexity of systems they are designing for, and so design values become central to modern systems.
Case study:
At the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation and Healthcare Human Factors in Toronto, design processes have been embedded into healthcare products including mobile, iPad, and desktop applications, and medical devices. User needs continuously inform priorities throughout the design process via quick iterations of formal and informal testing.
The resulting process incorporates user experience, content strategy, visual, interactive, and industrial design principles alongside human factors methodologies. Examples of our work include Breathe (an app for people with asthma), <30 Days (a mobile app for Heart and Stroke Foundation), the next evolution of bant (an app for people with diabetes), and a mobile ECG monitor.
Design and process examples from the above projects easily demonstrate how an embedded designer contributes to the following principles:
• accessibility
• engagement
• efficiency
• innovation
• safety
These are all values that come at a cost in both time and effort, but costs are offset by the value added from embedded designers. In-house designers not only streamline process by applying learnings from one project to others, but they contribute real, marketable assets that can be applied to nearly any department, any client, or any type of system.
Conclusion:
Design offers its applications more than a shiny veneer. It facilitates understanding through a specialized, visual approach to problem solving. It lays the framework for other application pieces like development, content, user interface, and strategy. It inspires healthcare providers to visualize models of what healthcare can accomplish.
These are powerful and transformative notions for healthcare, where safety, efficacy, and efficiency are critical issues. It's time healthcare makes these design values a core part of their practice.
As much as it is the surgeon’s job to perform surgery, the nurse’s job to nurse patients back to health, and the pharmacist’s job to manage medications, there is one position still making its way into the annals of healthcare workers: the designer. Designers have the unique skill sets to realize the vision of improved systems, so why aren’t there more designers working in the healthcare arena?
Currently, very little in healthcare is deliberately designed. Ad hoc, inefficient and unsafe design methods abound. The bar for design standards is low compared to other industries. Manufacturers of medical technologies only now understand the importance of user-centered design and human factors, prompted by the FDA’s design requirements for regulatory approval.
Patients and practitioners are people, and people expect good design in the technology they use. Technology should reflect human values; it should be comprehensible, usable, safe, and social. Though we have a long way to go, this is beginning to happen. However, many that recognize the value of design still rely on freelance designers, and this is not enough.
Design co-founders have created billions of dollars in value in the start-up world (flickr, YouTube, Etsy, Vimeo, Instagram). We have this opportunity in healthcare. But designers need to be exposed to healthcare environments, embedded in permanent, in-house positions so they are able to fully understand the complexity of systems they are designing for, and so design values become central to modern systems.
Case study:
At the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation and Healthcare Human Factors in Toronto, design processes have been embedded into healthcare products including mobile, iPad, and desktop applications, and medical devices. User needs continuously inform priorities throughout the design process via quick iterations of formal and informal testing.
The resulting process incorporates user experience, content strategy, visual, interactive, and industrial design principles alongside human factors methodologies. Examples of our work include Breathe (an app for people with asthma), <30 Days (a mobile app for Heart and Stroke Foundation), the next evolution of bant (an app for people with diabetes), and a mobile ECG monitor.
Design and process examples from the above projects easily demonstrate how an embedded designer contributes to the following principles:
• accessibility
• engagement
• efficiency
• innovation
• safety
These are all values that come at a cost in both time and effort, but costs are offset by the value added from embedded designers. In-house designers not only streamline process by applying learnings from one project to others, but they contribute real, marketable assets that can be applied to nearly any department, any client, or any type of system.
Conclusion:
Design offers its applications more than a shiny veneer. It facilitates understanding through a specialized, visual approach to problem solving. It lays the framework for other application pieces like development, content, user interface, and strategy. It inspires healthcare providers to visualize models of what healthcare can accomplish.
These are powerful and transformative notions for healthcare, where safety, efficacy, and efficiency are critical issues. It's time healthcare makes these design values a core part of their practice.
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