“I want to be part of something helpful and meaningful”

Illustration by Andrew Holder

In early March, Amanda Sammann and I shared a thought: Now is the time to design the new normal we all want. For too long, we’ve neglected the humanity in the people who deliver healthcare, in patients, and in communities with needs.

This is the time when design must come out of the shadows in healthcare. This pandemic is shining a light on our fractured and siloed health system. We treat someone’s broken shoulder and job loss as if each happened to a different person. We send people to hospitals when there’s something medicine can treat. But we leave people on their own to navigate access to transportation and education. Now, with COVID-19 stressing our systems and society in unprecedented ways, we’re seeing how our bodies, what we do for work, how we learn, and how we socialize are all fundamentally part of our health and wellbeing. We cannot move forward with a health system that continues to address, if at all, each of these things separately.

At the same time, responding to the urgent needs of the pandemic requires understanding the existing, deeply complex systems in place today. It requires being able to draw the current map while we draw an optimistic plan for a more functioning, inclusive, and accessible health system. These kinds of complex challenges all deeply involve humans; each with hopes, needs, fears, and goals. Regardless of background, profession, or socioeconomic status, we have to solve for the human needs first. And that’s exactly what we do as designers.

About 8 weeks ago, we started the Emergency Design Collective as a place for designers, doctors, researchers, product experts, and anyone else who shared our vision to come together and work on open, rapid, sustainable responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We made a commitment to work in the open and share everything.

We imagined a small handful of people who shared our passion for health design, vulnerable proportions, and wicked problems coming together to inspire each other’s responses. What we didn’t foresee was just how big of a tent we were building. Today, the EDC has grown to over 460 volunteer members across more than 20 projects, and a growing list of potential partners.

Focus on the needs

The EDC is working across three domains:

1. Design for frontline healthcare and healthcare workers. In a heartbreaking way, we’re asking those who deliver care — from technicians to nurse to doctors — to work under extreme conditions. At the frontlines the needs range from PPE to mental health and PTSD. One of the earliest EDC project teams, led by Soren DeOrlow began focusing on masks and quickly identified three options for easy-to-make, clinically tested face shields. In publishing a playbook, they activated an army of makers and fabrication shops who have delivered over 1,500 face shields in the Bay Area alone. Their designs are being used in New York, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Another EDC team, led by Tracy DeLuca is focused on resilience and the mental health needs of healthcare workers. There’s been some rapid sprinting by Nadia Roumani and Dr. Christian Rose on ways for healthcare workers to keep their homes and families safe. EDC teams have also partnered with the Stanford Emergency Medicine department to produce educational videos to share best practices with emergency medicine providers across the globe.

2. Design for vulnerable populations. From teens to older adults, from chronic conditions to emergent illness, there is a tremendous need to create specific responses for our vulnerable populations. As we move to a new normal of remote education, what happens to children with limited or no access to technology? Two EDC teams are focused on efforts for the unhomed communities. Mariko Kelly is at the front of a team looking at a platform to help create a marketplace of donations and needs to get things directly into the hands of people without homes. Devika Patel leads another team tackling the complex challenge of COVID-19 prevention and treatment in the unhomed community. The senior-focused team, led by Kate Piper quickly found two immediate needs — social isolation in older adults and a stigmatized eldercare workforce. What does it look like to include our elder care workers in our celebrations of frontline heroes? Pam Taylor has been spearheading a team to think about the unique challenges facing teens today, and recently partnered up with MentorOn, a digital mentorship platform for teens.

3. Design for the new normal. Our scientists and experts agree things may never go completely back to pre-COVID ways. Today, our homes have become our places of work, school, worship, replenishment and rest. While we may embrace some activities virtually, how do we ensure we are maintaining healthy relationships? How might we find new ways to celebrate life events like birthdays and weddings? One ECD team, led by Natasha Margot Blum, immediately recognized the anguish and challenges of end of life care in isolation. They’ve started working on ways to help families and loved ones to have important conversations and decisions before it may be too late. Another team, led by Ana Reza-Hadden is working on ways to safely stay fit.

The value

Over the past week, I’ve been holding 1:1 conversations with some of the EDC’s members as part of a strategy building exercise. There are some common themes in each of those conversations that underscore how important this work is, particularly in this time.

This was an untapped need.

So many people have shared a version of a similar sentiment: I want to do things that make an impact for people, I want my work to help people. As designers, we often get opportunities to work on shiny new things. And while those opportunities can be fun, many of us find the biggest rewards are in making people’s lives better. The EDC is evolving to be a place where like-minded people with a passion for a more healthy, human, and equitable world can work together in service of those goals. There seems to be some magic in being open source and untethered to an institution’s or corporation’s constraints.

There’s power in a diverse group.

Design is in the name, but it isn’t all the EDC is. Many of our members are physicians or medical students. Others have public health backgrounds. Some people come from artistic backgrounds while others are engineers. Another common refrain from our members is about the value of these multidisciplinary groups. Being able to work alongside a med student, service designer, and product manager has been what’s making the project work. It makes sense. If we want a less siloed future of health, we should be working in groups that aren’t constrained by degrees or professional accomplishments.

This has to sustain.

It isn’t enough to work on ‘right now’ solutions. Many things need urgent responses. But, as we work on right now solutions, we have to also think about the future we want. Similarly, we’re finding there is sustainability in the EDC community. It is a place many of us want to call home well after COVID-19 is in our past. There’s too much important work — too many public health crises and emergencies that need a design-driven, multidisciplinary, open response.

That’s why we have filed for non-profit status for the EDC. We want to build this platform for amazing people to do impactful work. We want to design right now solutions while working towards a more optimistic future; a future where healthcare isn’t fractured and siloed. We want an orientation to health that sees providers, patients, families, and communities as complex & multifaceted . We want systems that care for everyone equally and holistically. Now is the time to design the new normal we all want.

If you are interested in learning more, getting involved, or partnering with the EDC, join us at EmergencyDesignCollective.com