To Design Great Living And Good Health, ThinkEast
For a designer, one of the best parts of a job is the ability to start a new from scratch. There’s no previous flaws to correct, no tradition to worry about and no baggage of previous expectations that might have fallen short in execution. But when starting from scratch you can have an entirely different set of problems, because you have to have a tight grasp on the problem that needs to be solved, and know what resources or limitations are in play from the beginning.
In the latest Vital Signs lecture we got a look — from small to very big — at how the best part of the design process have been used in the health care world, and how they’ll come into play in the Austin area in coming years.
Stacey Chang, executive director of the medical school’s Design Institute For Health, shared how understanding the way people interact with devices was key to the work he did the health care arm of the IDEO design firm.
Dramatic improvements in a product like a blood glucose monitor could often be made by streamlining features or getting the item to deliver more value through use of cues and simple software instead of simply adding features onto an already imperfect device.
Chang and other health care leaders don’t have a totally blank slate as far as the Central Texas health care ecosystem goes, but it is a system that is still small and cooperative enough to guide existing institutions into new partnerships and behaviors. That’s as good as it gets for a dreamer wanting to transform health care delivery, and Chang was measured but enthusiastic in saying the medical school and others have a “once in a lifetime” chance in front of them.
Another rare opportunity comes with an East Austin project that Chang has been part of for a while: the thinkEast creative live/work project that is equal parts civic experiment, commercial development and philanthropic effort.
The site, which is currently under construction for its first phase, will see up to 300 housing units, studio and event space and other creative-focused attractions located on 24 acres of property that previously served as a fuel storage area for the former Bergstrom Air Force Base.
That development, which has been in the works since approximately 2012, is kind of the ultimate blank slate when it comes to creating affordable live/work areas in a rapidly gentrifying part of Austin. Because its creators — already successful from prior ventures — don’t have big profits as their motivation, thinkEast is intended to serve its community first, in as many ways as possible.
That includes health care, and Chang shared details of some of the plans for the site. There’s an effort to collect opt-in health care data when residents use free wifi access, creating health care and economic stability through job training in event services, and offering reduced rent to in-training medical students and other professionals in return for educating fellow thinkEast residents in their given field.
At first blush none of those scan as having all that much to do with improving health care in the community, especially since there’s no drop-in neighborhood medical facility planned for the site.
But a recurring theme of Vital Signs presenters has been that environment and living factors have far more to do with health than visits made to a doctor.
What Chang and the thinkEast creators are doing is designing a way to create a positive and healthy living experience for residents in hopes of minimizing the need to utilize acute or expensive care.
Call it less intervention through careful intention, which sounds like something any designer in any field would consider a priority.
