Understand the business and emotional value of designing for health in under 5 mins
It’s thrilling to smell the coffee in the hallway and hear the chatter of voices. The apprehension grows as you walk into a roomful of people. Imagine a large conference room filled with 600+ expectant stakeholders. Each participant awaits the workshop that you are facilitating. Your heart beats faster in anticipation. This moment feels like you’re standing at a precipice ready to leap into the unknown.
This is what designing for health means. It means that you and 600 other people are willing to rethink possibilities to enhance lives. Being a great designer means you learn from your colleagues and industry experts. Being a great designer for health adds another layer of intricacy. Designing for health is a calling. Your motivation to improve people’s lives is what drives you. During tough days, this motivation pushes you to strive for better. You are in your own right a subject matter expert. Then you realize that there are 600 other people in the room with the same proclivity for success. The healthcare domain is vast, complex, confusing at times, and utterly exhilarating.
A friend said to me on LinkedIn: “I see you go to some cool places and meet with different people, but I don’t know what you do.” That got me thinking. Who else doesn’t know how a designer contributes to healthcare practices? With this article, I will explore some of the business and emotional values of design for health. I hope this article sparks understanding and opens a dialogue to multi-disciplined collaboration.
Product designers work within the intersection of design, healthcare, technology, and business. We can reduce costs and enable teams to be more efficient in getting our product to the market. Our ethos is to urge incremental progress. We drive business forward in extraordinary ways through our strategic Design Principles.
What we do
- We transform the future of healthcare. We are at the precipice of digital evolution. Innovation revolutionizes the way we work: How AI Is Transforming The Future of Healthcare.
- We mitigate risks by unpacking difficult problems and bring forth sustainable solutions. Partnerships with subject matter experts are crucial. Here is an example: Missed findings: One symptom of burnout in radiology.
- We get to the root of each question. As conditions change, we evolve our designs to contend with rigorous healthcare demands. From Harvard Business Review (“…as complexity increases, a system’s understandability decreases”): Taming Complexity.
Our business values
- We understand the impact of empathy. As collaborators, we work with diverse teams. Our mission is to align customer partnerships towards common goals: Solutions, Not Art — The True Business Value of Design.
- We craft stories that emotionally connect healthcare workers’ pain points. We fulfill product requirements that align with Project Managers and healthcare SMEs. Storytelling can bring light to use cases: Unleashing The Brain Power Of Narrative.
- We offer unbiased research to mitigate risks. We maintain objectivity and deliver research, backed with reliable data. Minimize Design Risk by Focusing on Outcomes not Features.
How we achieve our goals
- We understand that failure is part of success. We are able to flourish under the harsh lights of frustration. Akin to a phoenix rising from ashes, we rise to the occasion after defeat. We encourage the tough work of bringing issues out into the open. Then and only then can we work together towards healing. Differences aside, we focus work on who matters most: patients and healthcare providers.
- We are future thinkers. Our curiosity leads to inventive ways to complete tasks. We are innovative and connect disparate processes together while working within limits. We use evidence-based research to provide a better quality of life. Adherence to ethical and regulatory responsibilities are our everyday reality.
- We are resilient. We bring our passion which creates a resilient culture of shared responsibility. Passion reinforces our skills and competencies. Designers have a true story on why they chose to design within health. Start a conversation and ask why.
Consider a healthcare designer as a renewable energy source. Yes, we are workshop experts, presentation gurus, research fanatics, and amazing visual creators. And we can do more. Because of our healthcare background, we are willing to do more. We can plan roadmaps, outline a full product experience and bring a fresh perspective to the conversation. We cultivate growth and reexamine potential. Next time, instead of asking if we can provide one small deliverable, ask what else can we do together?
Chris Rader is a Design Manager for IBM Watson Health and a Registered Nurse. She’s also a mother of 2 little ones, a Ragnar Relay finisher, a lifelong learner, and loves to give back to the community through real and virtual hugs. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
