Inspiring service innovation through co-design in public sector healthcare

How can we inspire service innovation through the co-design of public sector healthcare delivery particularly when facing a large and complex challenge? The design and development of a new prototype food service to address malnutrition in older adult hospital patients is used as a case study. It describes how methods used predominantly by designers have been adapted to empower, train, inspire, facilitate and guide not only the multi-disciplinary research team - including food scientists, nutritionists, medical sociologists, ergonomists, and technologists - but also service users and providers. The co-design process is based on the idea that much innovation comes from creating a blend of ideas from multiple sources and that the design of the research can influence the degree of innovation. This paper describes the approach and process that has provided the research team with valuable findings, insights and ideas crucial to successful service redesign and innovation and which is resulting in a new food service prototype

‘Fast forward’: Accelerating Innovation in Health and Wellbeing

Innovation within the UK National Health Service has the potential to improve and extend millions of lives, drive quality and productivity and support the UK economy. However, the pace and scale of systematic adoption and diffusion remains a challenge, and healthcare research infrastructure is designed to manage the risks associated with clinical trials rather than research leading to digital and service innovation. Design approaches to innovation in health and wellbeing offer an opportunity to accelerate innovation, embrace interdisciplinarity and embed users in development. In particular, participatory design advocates involving users in the design process to achieve enhanced results in terms of efficiency and usability. The paper will discuss the challenges of applying novel creative approaches to accelerate participative innovation in health and wellbeing, and offer some strategies for designers and design researchers who are working in this context. Conclusions are drawn about the need to understand how to better link upstream design research to implementation in order to further accelerate the rate at which transformative technology is embedded in health and care practice

Designed Engagement

Designed Engagement uses design methods and skills to transform the way we talk to people in the community. We go to where people are: designing positive and thought provoking public engagement to stimulate creative dialogue and explore new ways of addressing societal challenges. Involving the public in dialogue around changes to policy and the design of services is a key target for policy makers, however traditional approaches offer little scope for creativity and meaningful engagement. Design brings a wealth of expertise to create engaging experiences, facilitate dialogue, and translate insights into tangible outputs for decision makers. We discuss public engagement literature and previous examples of design within this context. We introduce ‘Designed Engagement’ to denote design-led approaches to public engagement, illustrated through two examples of pop-up Designed Engagement. We discuss advantages, limitations and implications for design, concluding with the need for further research to evaluate and demonstrate the contribution and value of design in public engagement

Design for empathy within participatory design approaches

The role of the designer is changing from the ‘top-down’ creative to the humble designer (Slavin, 2016), fostering collaboration with a range of stakeholders and partnering with other disciplines as the ‘integrative discipline’ (Teal and French, 2016). As such, a new consideration of empathy is required to creatively engage people in co-creation using participatory design approaches. This paper discusses empathy within a participatory design approach, sharing methods and reflections of designing ‘with’ and ‘for’ empathy. The paper considers the role of the designer in engendering empathy in collaborative creativity, and illustrates approaches from applied projects in the health and care context. Experience Labs are a participatory design approach providing a space for collaboration where a diverse range of participants (academics, business, civic, end users) can collaborate in a creative process to explore and iterate concepts for health and care. The Lab methods, tools and artefacts are designed to move participants through a series of designed spaces to provide them with the experience, skills and language required to critically reflect and evaluate emerging ideas. Collaborations are carefully curated to bring together the ‘right’ mix of expertise in relation to the project. The challenge is to ensure that relationships move quickly from ‘them and us’ to a collective ‘we’, as we explore ideas and build trust. The methods and approaches used to foster empathy will be shared, alongside previous literature on empathic design within user-centred approaches, highlighting the need to consider the ways in which we design ‘for’ empathy in participatory design

Experience Labs: Co-Creating Health and Care Innovations Using Design Tools and Artefacts

For healthcare innovations to be successful, the voices of those receiving or delivering such innovations need to be heard much earlier in the design process. This is not easy as there are likely to be multiple stakeholders involved, and their different backgrounds make it difficult to challenge or evaluate potential innovation in the early stage of development. This paper positions the Experience Lab as a means of co-creating sustainable, innovative solutions to healthcare challenges. The Experience Lab offers participants, both receiving and delivering healthcare, the opportunity to engage in the design process, share insights, experience new concepts and imagine new ways of responding to challenges. The material artefacts and bespoke tools provide the conditions through which to create new meanings and shared experiences. This paper presents the Experience Lab approach, artefacts and tools, providing examples of these in context. The paper concludes with the need for further research to understand the role of artefacts and tools in supporting detail design and implementation beyond the Lab, and the potential of the Lab approach for other contexts

Redesigning the care journey for people with functional disorder

This report describes a collaborative project between The Glasgow School of Art (GSA), NHS Grampian and Robert Gordon University (RGU). The project sought to use the latest evidence and the experiences of people living with functional disorders and health and care professionals to rethink the care journey for functional disorders in NHS Grampian. This report aims to outline the proposed future pathway for functional disorders. It begins by summarising the need for innovation in care for functional disorders in NHS Grampian, followed by an overview of the participatory approach taken to engage with people with lived experience of functional disorders and health and care professionals to redesign the care journey. The report presents the proposed future pathway alongside the evidence generated throughout the project, concluding with a roadmap of the next steps and a call for action to work towards implementing the new pathway

Modern Outpatient Care

A Person-Centred Vision for Modern Outpatient Care for People Living with Multiple Long-Term Conditions The Modern Outpatient project employed a participatory design approach to develop a person-centred vision for the future of Outpatient services. Through interviews with people living with multiple long-term conditions, pop-up public engagement and co-design workshops with NHS staff, rich insights were generated about how people would like to be supported to self-manage, and new models of person-centred care were designed. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Scottish Government in order to inform the ongoing and future work of The Modern Outpatient Programme

Mass media and communication interventions to increase HIV testing among gay and other men who have sex with Men:Social marketing and visual design component analysis

Mass media and communication interventions can play a role in increasing HIV testing among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Despite the key role of social marketing principles and visual design within intervention development of this type, evidence is limited regarding interventions’ social marketing mix or visual design. As part of a systematic review, intervention content was assessed using social marketing theory and social semiotics. Data were extracted on the nature of the intervention, mode of delivery, use of imagery, content and tone and the eight key characteristics of social marketing. Data were synthesised narratively. Across the 19 included studies, reference to social marketing principles was often superficial. Common design features were identified across the interventions, regardless of effectiveness, including: the use of actors inferred to be GBMSM; use of ‘naked’ and sexually explicit imagery; and the use of text framed as statements or instructions. Our results suggest that effective interventions tended to use multiple modes of delivery, indicating high social marketing complexity. However, this is only part of intervention development, and social marketing principles are key to driving the development process. We identified consistent aspects of intervention design, but were unable to determine whether this is based on evidence of effectiveness or a lack of originality in intervention design. An openness to novel ideas in design and delivery is key to ensuring that evidence-informed interventions are effective for target populations

Melanoma

The aim of this project was to prototype a healthcare intervention which supports people in remote areas to undertake their own self-monitoring for melanoma supported by digital technologies

Directory App

The Directory App project was proposed by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS), and accepted by the Digital Health Institute (DHI) as an Experience Lab, which took place in December 2014. The Experience Lab aimed to explore and develop a basic prototype of a Directory App to support initial small-scale testing. The design-led approach aimed to deliver a set of requirements that were firmly user driven. The Lab provided a safe and realistic environment through which the Lab Team helped users explore the concept and share their ideas to design and prototype the Directory App. A series of activities including mapping, role-play, prototyping, and evaluating current proposed solutions were designed to iteratively develop ideas for the Directory App. The outputs from the Lab included audio, photos, videos and field notes which were analysed for emerging themes. The findings of the Lab provide validation and extension of the concept to include contact information, local referral criteria and national clinical guidelines. Service and pathway information should be collated locally and held nationally, and effective implementation will rely on consistent and accurate information that is maintained and updated regularly. Four functional prototypes were created and tested, which generated a set of requirements and design ideas for the development of the Directory App