Observation – Designing with Healthcare Workers

For my studies at ZHdK I had to do an observation for the module Sweet Dreams are Made of This. As part of my observation I conducted a workshop with my team mates from work. During the workshop I will observe how the two people that work in the healthcare industry react to the design workshop and behave. I did this because umana, the start-up that I work for, is also in the healthcare sector. Tomorrow in the meeting a doctor and a medical practice assistant (MPA) will participate.

Goal & Preparation

The goal of the workshop is to reflect on the year 2021, locate existing or new problems and develop solutions for it. To accomplish that, I thought of using Figma (FigJam) as a collaboration tool. I prepared an introduction and classic double dimond process. I will start explaining what the goal and the double diamond principle are. Then I put a post-it with each stakeholder on the board, that plays a role in our project. In the end I added some support elements for the participants. For example questions they could pose themselves to generate ideas or inspirational graphics like the one below.

An inspiration to analyse problems to its roots

Challenges

Our meetings are always super tight and therefore not a lot of time is given. Furthermore, it is the first design workshop I conduct and also probably the first workshop the team members participate. The team consists of people with a lot of different backgrounds. There is a medical practice assistant and a doctor, the two people I am most interested in. Then, there is a data analyst, a teacher, a business administration student, as well as a medical informatics student.

Observation

In the meeting I quickly realised that the doctor and the medical assistant were only participating for a few minutes and then had a chat together and discussed the problems verbally. I blame two things for that. First they are not as tech-savvy, as the others in the team – the ones who actually develop the product. I believe they were a little bit overwhelmed by figma. Also I think, they did not really understand the point of the exercise and that we are actually interested in their opinion. It seemed like, that they thought that the product development team is responsible for the features and that they know better how things should work. Regarding the others, I think it could have helped to do a little pre-exercise to lower inhibitions. Most of them did not go crazy with their ideas. Also a disadvantage of Figma is the ability to work parallel. You are not really aware of the others and their post-its. After collecting problems and discussing them, the board was more and more disappearing in the background. For the solution part we didn't use the board at all.

The end result – the last two steps (finding a solution) were not done on figma

Improvements for the next workshop

Not using a tool, but analog post-its and a wall. This is more accessible for non-designers.
Improve defining the goal and maybe even guide them more with concrete tasks through the process
An exercise or something to lower inhibition of the participants. Setting the "mood" for brainstorming.
Add more time for the process.