Why End of Life?
Over four months, thousands of people joined in an effort to reimagine the end-of-life experience. We are in awe of the response we received from our community, and excited to share a few of the stories that emerged from our work.
OpenIDEO partnered with Sutter Health, The Helix Centre and The Ungerleider Palliative Care Education Fund to launch the End of Life Challenge. This four-month collaborative process invited more than 100,000 people to explore the following question: How might we reimagine the end-of-life experience for ourselves and our loved ones?
“OpenIDEO’s a powerful engine to encourage people to come together in a different, new way. There is so much potential.”—Jackie del Castillo, Helix Centre
Before we kicked off the challenge, we worked closely with our sponsors to co-create goals that would spark conversation and encourage collaboration from a range of diverse people (read more here).
“We felt that it was important to create a dialogue that was much bigger than just the healthcare system, and more about a holistic view of what end of life means from a patient perspective.” — Jackie del Castillo, Helix Centre
By the end of the Challenge, more than 15,000 people from 89 countries visited had come together to share personal stories, developing hundreds of ideas to reimagine the end-of-life experience.
The Challenge process is built on human-centered design, a process founded on empathy. It begins with a month-long Research phase to collect stories and insights about the topic, which in this case is often considered taboo.
During this phase of the Challenge, we also launched a global storytelling event series called #LetsTalkAboutDeath. Through the series, thousands of people participated in real, raw conversations about death in more than 20 countries worldwide.
Innovators who emerged during the next phase (Ideas) included Yoko Sen, an ambient electronic musician from Japan who submitted Sound Will, which tackles soundscapes in hospitals. She is currently testing her idea at Sibley Memorial Hospital, part of Johns Hopkins Medical, to enthusiastic feedback. Recent college graduate Vibhuti Krishna submitted Vykarious, which mobilizes young people to fulfill the adventurous dreams of those nearing the end of life. Death-Ed, submitted by two doctors, puts a spin on sex-ed and brings death education into classrooms—they’re prototyping the curriculum in multiple high schools in spring 2017.
By the end of the Ideas phase, 300 solutions had been posted to the platform. Thousands of comments were posted by people around the globe to help build on the ideas. Our sponsors and the community then selected 50 ideas that would move into a formal refinement stage. Topic experts, designers and community members offered feedback that brought ideas to the next level. After idea submitters applied the feedback, our sponsors made a final review and selected 10 Top Ideas—including Sound Will, Vykarious and Death-Ed.
I think you at OpenIDEO have a really powerful engine to encourage people to come together in a different way. There’s so much potential for it beyond its current instance. — Jackie del Castillo, Helix Centre
Dozens of people — like Jim Rosenberg (a consultant) and Morgan Meinel (a palliative care nurse) — took the lead to support community members through the Challenge process. They offered feedback, questions and insights that helped community members think through their ideas in deeper ways. As Morgan told us during an interview about the experience, she also gained something: a wider lens on the topic she works on every day. “After the challenge, I feel like my mind has just opened up so much,” she says. Along with other community members, Morgan and Jim shared their hopes for the future of death and dying.
One beautiful way to expand the end of life conversation beyond the online was to leverage the power of face-to-face connections in our own backyard. So alongside two community leaders in San Francisco, we launched the inaugural Re:Imagine, a weeklong citywide festival about living and dying through art, experience, and design.
Thousands of people came to more than 30 events in the city, exploring the topic through panels, poetry, video art, interactive workshops, dinners and dance. The events included more than 40 artists using virtual reality to help people empathize with the end of life, and a night of storytelling by doctors who engage with death — and life — every day.
Our community accomplished so much in just four months. It’s incredibly inspiring, and we look forward to following them deeper into this topic. With your support, we look forward to connecting with new people and organizations, to fuel additional creativity and innovation. If you’d like to join us and our sponsors in that effort, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
“Design can do many things in the context of movements; it can draw out the empathy that people already have. It’s part of the reason we join movements. People want to talk about their experiences and understand those of others, and be a catalyst for finding the solutions that we need. The OpenIDEO platform is an incredible outlet to build that out.” — Jackie del Castillo, Helix Centre
For now, we hope you’ll enjoy the collection of stories we’ve produced about the incredible community members who have brought death and dying back into life.
Read more stories about the people, ideas, and moments of OpenIDEO’s End of Life Challenge.
