Let’s talk healthcare design: Jeremy Beaudry
After a successful stint leading a globally respected design programme in Philadelphia, Jeremy Beaudry’s latest challenge brought him to Burlington, Vermont (Population; 40,000 people).
The city might be smaller, but the challenges certainly aren’t. At the cities main hopsital Jeremy’s tackling some difficult projects and has some strong views on how healthcare could inform design education in the future.
We caught up with him to find out more.
What’s your current role and how did you get there?
About a year ago, I was hired by the UVM Medical Center to be its first ever experience design strategist. (Thankfully, Katie McCurdy, was also brought in as a UX design consultant shortly before I arrived, and together we have been privileged to grow the practice of human-centered design at the organization.)
Previously, I taught and directed a phenomenal graduate design program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia called Design for Social Impact, where we had done a number of partnership projects in healthcare.
On a personal note, a few years ago a close family member was wrestling with a very serious illness and hospitalized numerous times. As an advocate, I was with them as they tried to navigate the maze of industrial healthcare. My eyes were opened to the incredible degree of brokenness in our healthcare systems, despite the best intentions of very qualified and caring individual providers.
The more I learned about these systems and institutions — the great power they exert over how people understand their health and their ability to take care of themselves — the more I was drawn into that world as a place to use my experience and skills as a designer to help make it better. The opportunity to work as a designer embedded in a large academic medical center has been so meaningful for me.
You’ve spent a lot of your career so far in education, teaching art and design in Philadelphia. Do you see a place for healthcare in design education?
Healthcare is such a rich context for design education, and you will find numerous examples of both undergraduate and graduate design studios partnering with healthcare institutions and providers on a range of projects with many different types of outcomes.
What healthcare opens up for students is the opportunity to make sense of incredibly complex problems (systems thinking) while learning from people who are often at their most vulnerable (empathic thinking) and subject to myriad intimate touchpoints in the course of the experience of health and healthcare (design for services, user experience, interactions, etc.).
But the converse of the question is also true, and being demonstrated: that is, the role of design in the education of healthcare providers. Before leaving Philadelphia, I had the privilege to lead workshops in human-centered design with first-year medical students at Thomas Jefferson University who were following a design curriculum in addition to their medical training. (This revolutionary initiative was created by Dr. Bon Ku.) The premise is this: equip future doctors with the mindset of a designer (and even some of the skills) so that they become more creative problem solvers, more systems-minded and more empathetic with the people they care for. For me, this is one of the most exciting developments in medical education today.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Currently, I have a couple of projects that are at important transitional points.
Katie McCurdy and I along with others on our team recently wrapped up an extensive design research project looking at wayfinding at our main campus, and we are now figuring out how to shift from research mode into design and implementation.
Due to the nature of this project, there are many important collaborations that must be developed in order to move the work forward — with facilities, registration and volunteer services, for example. So, we are taking our findings to key stakeholders around the organization and building a larger team. This task is as important as the research phases, because getting to tangible impact will require a broader commitment.
The second project in transition is hiCOlab, which is a healthcare service innovation initiative begun by the president of our physician’s group. My colleague, Abby Trutor-Mead, and I have been working on a prototype of this innovation lab over the last several months. It began in earnest with many community workshops to discover unmet needs at the nexus of health and healthcare as expressed by a diverse range of stakeholders.
After pulling out the major themes, we created two distinct design opportunities, and then brought in an amazing team of design interns to develop and test prototypes. One was focused on post-hospitalization care and medication instructions for patients. The other focused on improving relationships between patients, their caregivers and healthcare provides in the hospital setting. These projects were very successful, and help us demonstrate the power of design in making positive change in the healthcare. Our task now is to tell this story across the organization and build institutional support for the resources we need to make this innovation lab sustainable and scalable.
What’s interesting here — in addition to the explicit work being done on each of this projects — is the important organizational culture component that requires us to sow the seeds of collaboration throughout the process. So, we’re not just doing these projects in a bubble and then going out to seek approval and support. Rather, in the participatory spirit of co-design, we are involving as many people as we can in the design process at different levels in order to embed our work and approach in the fabric of the organization. By sharing our work and inviting others to contribute, we set the stage for more long-term engagement and sustaining support. (This is something I’ve written and spoken about elsewhere.)
How has your design approach adapted for a healthcare environment?
Much of my collaborative design work in the past has depended upon the creation and use of design tools to facilitate conversations and learning. I think I came into my role at the hospital with a very naive view of the types of tools I would create and use, particularly in the inpatient hospital setting.
I was, and still am, curious about how physical and visual tools might enhance the experience of patients with their providers, whether by helping them create space for more critical conversations or helping them participate in their in a different way. However, after shadowing doctors and nurses and spending time with patients in their rooms, the emotional and physical barriers to patient participation — their ability to use certain tools — became very clear. I stupidly assumed patients to be just like other, more able-bodied people I had worked with!
Of course, many patients in the hospital are in various states of pain, incapacity, emotional stress, vulnerability and even consciousness. This has been a very important (and humbling) set of constraints to understand and adjust my thinking around. As a larger lesson, it also speaks to the absolutely fundamental principle of human-centered design which is to understand the perspectives of the people we design for and with.
What’s the ‘can’t be without’ item in your design toolkit?
Anything that helps me make the work visible so that it can be shared and discussed with the people I work with. A lot of simple drawing materials: markers and whiteboards, pens and copy paper, post-it notes.
When ideas need more refinement as either process maps, user journeys, or wireframes, then a mapping software like OmniGraffle is useful for quickly building more detailed and clear visualizations. Drawing and other visualization techniques are so important for externalizing the subject of our conversations and presenting with specificity what we talk about when we talk about XZY.
And finally, what’s coming up for you that you’re excited about
Recently, my family and I moved into an awesome 1900-era house in Montpelier, Vermont, which is actually a massive redesign-your-life project. So, we are knee-deep in several renovation projects inside and outside, and thrilled with the challenge of creating new domestic spaces and rhythms for the years to come.
Questions from James Turner and answers by Jeremy Beaudry who’s an Experience Design Strategist at the UVM Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont.
DesigningHealth.care tells stories from designers working on the front lines of healthcare transformation. Want to take part? Drop us an email at hello@jamesturner.co.uk.
