Sprint 1 — Problem Discovery

During this Discovery Phase, we created a ‘Card Game’ and a ‘Survey Poster’ as our first two prototypes that are mainly for research purposes. By involving both parents and hospital staff in these prototypes we hoped to spark conversations among them to collect insights. We also had chances to meet several stakeholders of the project to gain knowledge on the topic from their perspectives and to build rapport with them.

Fact Sheet

Research & Brainstorming Methods:

• Meeting (Client) Ph.D. Researcher of Amsterdam UMC Hospital, Head of Intensive Care Unit of Emma Children’s Hospital
• Participation Observation at Emma Children’s Hospital
• Short Interview with Parents
• Desk Research
• Design Tools

What did we create?

• Stakeholders Map
• Prototype 1 — ‘Card Game’
• Prototype 2 — ‘Poster’

Research

To have a general understanding of the background and problem, we started with Desk Research to understand, 1) Current transition journey from hospital to home for families of chronically ill children in Amsterdam UMC; 2) Current Initiatives in Het Jeroen Pit Huis and other Transition Units; 3) Stakeholders; 4) Areas to improve the transition from home to the hospital; 5) General understanding of ‘Empowerment’

We also had a chance to visit the Intensive Care Unit of Emma Children’s Hospital. As we followed the nurse to check the children’s status, we experienced how depressing and worrisome it is to stay in the ICU. During a short interview with a parent, we got to understand the challenges they face when coordinating with hospital staff and difficulties in dealing with uncertainties. Lastly, the Head of Department explained how the development of Het Jeroen Pit Huis — a transition care unit with the home environment, could help alleviate the burden of ICU staff and empower the family as a whole.

Some main insights we obtained:

1) Parents are often overwhelmed with taking care of their children, and that uncertainties about diagnosing the child is one of the main reasons;

2) Hence, it is better to empower parents so that they are able to make decisions independently and have deeper knowledge about their children’s situation;

3) The coordination of discharge between hospital and the family was not clear enough;

4) The needs of families varies a lot and change at every stage of the transition process. (eg. financial, emotional, care coordination, medical knowledge, etc.).

With the information on hand, we created a Stakeholders Map. This map also allowed us to find the gaps for further research.

Prototype

As we were brainstorming our first prototype for research, we incorporated the idea of ‘empathy’. Our aim of the prototype was to stimulate conversations among stakeholders to collect insights and to enhance mutual understanding. Hence, we created an empathy card game to be played among parents, caregivers, and hospital staff.

We believe to allow users to empathize with each other, they should be able to step in each other’s shoes and think of the needs in different situations. In the game, a player will take a situation card with an icon, and explain a personal experience they can recall. They will also enter the emotion felt during this experience on an emotion scale that will be shown on a tablet. While the player explains the situation, the others will try to empathize and then discuss with the speaker whether their thoughts match with each other. They can do this by writing on the following cards: ‘What does the speaker need in this situation?’, ‘Ask a question about this situation’, ‘Give a compliment’, and ‘Grant the speaker a superpower’. After this, they will discuss their answers. At the end of the game a visual overview of the emotions felt during the game are shown on the tablet.

The Card Game prototype is a method to collect qualitative information from our target audiences and see what emotions are felt during their transitions. We also wanted to make it more accessible to parents and hospital staff so we created Prototype 2 for further qualitative research — We transformed the game design into a Digital Message Board with a very similar concept of collecting thoughts about how to improve the transition journey from hospital to home.

This board will be circulated among parents and hospital staff. They will be guided to input their ‘Needs’, ‘Questions’, ‘Compliment’ and ‘Superpower’. A benefit of this design is that parents could read content created by other parents and staff, thus, the board has functions of ‘comment collection’, as well as a platform for stakeholders to empathize with each other.

Challenges & Things we learned

• To ‘use’ our research prototype, it is necessary to invite parents and staff to join the Card Game. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, it seems challenging to invite a lot of them for the research as they are usually busy, especially for the hospital staff. We tackled the problem by developing Prototype 2 (Digital Message Board) so that they could involve in the research anytime and anywhere.
• It was very challenging to keep a balance between a playful game and an effective tool for dialogue and research. Also, the sensitivity of the theme made us doubt on some playful features. By testing on other trainees and stakeholders we improved our concept and created an intervention prototype that we felt could help to set a stage for dialogue and empathizing.
• By the end of Sprint 1, the COVID-19 issue had become more severe and caused us to work from home. Also, shifting all the teamwork online is another challenge, as using online tools also requires time to experiment. Fortunately, our team is very adaptive and we were able to hold brainstorming sessions smoothly by using tools, such as Miro/ Mural. We also constantly evaluate our team dynamics to ensure everyone is working comfortably while being able to complete team tasks effectively.
  Check out Sprint 2 to see how we overcome more challenges working remotely!