This was the question posed to a handful of leading international companies, and it was there answers to this question that would form the 4-hour conference at The Danish Design Center. It sounded pretty interesting, and it didn’t disappoint.
We were treated to talks from Alice Rawsthorn, Design Critic from the International Herald Tribune; Clive Van Heerden, Senior Director at Philips Design – Design Probes; Francois Lenfant, Manger of Global Product Design, Developed Markets, GE Healthcare; and David Kester, Chief Executive, Design Council UK.

Although each had their own particular spin there was a very evident dominant theme – and we don’t just mean design.

Designing for people, for humanity, is what these companies see as the future of design. As Francois put it, GE Healthcare’s designers’ ultimate goal is human benefit – what better goal can there be?

It was clear to see how designers are being involved in societal aspects today – they’re being recognised as beneficial for governments – even the UK Cabinet has a behavioural insights team. Designers are no longer just called in to make a leaflet look pretty and fold the right way, they are used, as David Kessler said, to nudge social behaviour and encourage changes within society, changes which focus on the fundamental ways we work, play, and live. By focusing on user-centric solutions the hope is that problems we witness in society today can be totally avoided in the future – even before they even begin.

The sobering fact presented to us by Clive was that 70% of populations will live in cities by 2050, highlighting the immense urban sprawl we’ll soon be facing. The way today’s comparatively small cities function, from power plants to water treatments, just won’t work in the future. Bu it’s not just industrial processes and solutions that will have to be redesigned – it’s just as much how society will function and cope with such a huge amount of people being crammed into urban spaces – not to mention the millions of youths that feel neglected by governments and the rest of society. This is where designers can make a difference. They can be involved in entire projects, from start to finish, projects that involve, empower and enrich, projects that range from a closed loop toilet water treatment process to youth projects.

Examples during the conference were;

Studio H

Studio H is a high school design/build curriculum for rural community benefit. Based in Bertie County in North Carolina (the poorest county with one in three children living in poverty and only 27% of 3rd-8th grade students passing the state standard for both English and maths), the one-year programme is offered to Junior-year students and provides college credit, a summer job, and a hands-on opportunity to build real-world projects for the community.

Loops by Participate

Loops is a project involving young people who are typically regarded as trouble by society and the media. They are locked in to their communities and never have a chance to break free from the downward spiral they are so often caught up in. Loops is a social enterprise that aims to expand young people’s purpose and possibility. Piloting in 2009, and now going live in 2 locations, Croydon and Brighton, it is now preparing to roll out nationally.

FARM: shop

As part of a council supported project to help regenerate parts of Dalston, FARM: shop is a groundbreaking urban agriculture centre which will include a community café, an events venue, and workspace, and will offer fresh produce directly traceable to a farm or grown in the shop itself.

It was fascinating and incredibly encouraging to realise these themes were running through every talk regardless what sector or country they were from. Design and society is a theme we’ve touched upon here in this blog in regards to Denmark and there are many, many other initiatives going on around the world – not least in the UK.

They say design can’t save the world, that it can only help, but if these projects and this passion were anything to go by, we’d say design can come pretty damn close.

“Change before you have to.” Jack Welch, ex-CEO GE

We’ve recently become partners with the Danish Red Cross, a partnership we’re proud of, and we’re sure will produce some great work. We’ve donated a total of 5000 working hours to be used over the next 3 years on projects.

We’ve already held one workshop with them which took place around Christmas 2009 and as a result of that, we found our first project goal; to double last year’s result of money collected. Challenges have been identified, and ideas brainstormed, and the project is now taking shape.

This type of cooperation is new to us at Designit, and it’s proving to be an exciting opportunity to use our entire creative palette and crisscross all of our different competencies, in new and inspiring combinations. By increasing the focus on companies’ social awareness and responsibility we hope the initiative will spread.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment in the design community about whether or not design can change the world. We think it can. Sure, it might not do it directly, but it can certainly help. From simple tools to healthcare, from instructional guides to education, design can play a part in making life better for people around the world.

Below you can see some photos from our workshop. With a seriously good chunk of Designit working away all day on it, you can be sure we came up with some great ideas and proposals on how we can help the Red Cross achieve their target.

They tell me that this year has been a good year for wasps; I found that of little consolation sitting in a London A&E on the night of the World Cup Final, having been attacked by a swarm of them after inadvertently chopping the top off a nest. Despite the game being shown on a rather tired-looking TV in the waiting area, I found myself more engrossed in the production line that I was being processed along. And being processed was certainly how it felt. The mark of lean production was stamped all over it, all in the name of service innovation.

Innovation is a well used word these days, and rightly so, if we go with the old Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) definition as being “the successful commercialisation of a novel idea.” We need new ideas and we need to get them to “market” (a term I use in the very broadest sense) – perhaps more so now than ever. And whilst a huge amount of energy and money has been spent in this arena in recent years, my instinct is that we have been looking in the wrong place. I say this partly as a result of working in the health innovation space in recent years as a design consultant, and partly because when the DTI was reshaped in 2007, it became the Departments of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) and Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). You see, I can’t help thinking that Innovation should have gone in with Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Universities, amongst many other sources, have the ideas, but it is business that commercialises them within the boundaries of regulations. Spinning out technology start-ups invariably leads to a well-trodden path of technology push rather that needs pull. Successful commercialisation (again, a term used in its broadest sense) really only comes about when it meets a demand. Some say it has to meet a need or solve a problem, but I’m not convinced. I didn’t need an iPhone, life wasn’t a problem without one. Once it appeared, however, and I understood what it could do for me, I wanted one.

In healthcare, we have rather neglected to consider what people might want – not just the patient, but also the people who work within the system. In recent years the Design Council tried to address this with projects such as Design Bugs Out and Patient Dignity – although the former was a rather grand title for what was really a design-better-bedside-furniture challenge. And, on reflection, that is a shame as it detracts from the fact that having better functioning, better performing and better looking hospital furniture must have a positive impact on staff moral and patient recovery. It’s about delivering things that actually work, in every dimension – in this case wiping it, working it and wanting it. Therefore, when asked, as I frequently am, what design is, I use two words – usability and desirability. In a recent article in the Financial Times, entitled ‘An experiment in design’, Andrew Jack explored how pharmaceutical groups are using consumer industry techniques to better understand their patients’ needs. He cited the example of Unilever’s development of Clearblue, the now de facto standard home pregnancy test. It was the designers, more than the scientists, who really understood the customer and made the difference.

Perhaps one area of healthcare where the patient should really be at the heart of the matter, but where they are rarely even mentioned, is telehealth. I’ve known about telehealth for as long as I can remember. It was one of those classic Tomorrow’s World case studies – in the future we will be able to do this! Of course it is here now, and people will tell you that it saves money, it means the clinician can be in several places at once, it’s completely technically feasible, it can generate income through bandwidth, it benefits the local authority or the community nurse… But what about George, wouldn’t he much prefer it if someone popped around more often now that he is on his own? What about Sue? She actually quite enjoys chatting with the practice nurse, and really benefits from getting out despite it taking a bit of effort. Whose health is it anyway?

Our health services have largely evolved around the people who work in them, with the clinician at the top of the tree. My recent experience in A&E made that very evident. I didn’t enjoy the fact that I had to interact with five different people and a self-service vending machine for the tablets I had to take away with me. I didn’t enjoy the fact that I had to sit back in the waiting area once I had a canuala in my arm, just in case I needed drugs administered intravenously at a later date, as it would save time. Of course one doesn’t go to hospital to have fun, but it would certainly help if the experience was more enjoyable – everyone would benefit.

The Coalition Government has thrown down the gauntlet to the health service to save money, but at the same time as being more accessible and more accountable. We will have to come up with new ways of doing things, and get them adopted and diffused around the system quickly – perhaps like never before. We will have to innovate. We will have to successfully “commercialise” novel ideas. We will have to both create and satisfy demand. We will have to put the patient, the “consumer” first. We will have to create a “consumer” health service.

At Designit, we’ve been working at a Danish hospital with service innovation for a year now. And Designit’s EPIC workshop indicated that one challenge is universal for hospitals: humanising healthcare.

Participants of the workshop – among others healthcare professionals and decision-makers from the public and private healthcare sector in the U.S. – said there was a need to: 1) improve communication between staff and patients so that that patient’s understand their situation and role, 2) make people feel welcome and safe 3) meet the needs of users as individuals.

In other words, they expressed a need for increased focus on the person. The individual. Ensuring the system fits the user – and not the other way round. Create real solutions for real people – that is also the need identified at the workshop and most certainly by our fieldwork in at Odense University Hospital in Denmark.

So how do you do this? Well, it’s important to say that this doesn’t have to cost the earth. As an innovator / design thinker, you need to show respect for the complexity of hospitals and the constraints. You must accept hospitals’ evidence-based culture – then identify what to test and create the right test change conditions. Many small, incremental innovations can, when gathered, have a big impact. It’s not about changing everything overnight, but slowly starting a new mindset and a movement.

Another crucial point is commitment. As a decision-maker at a hospital, you need to ask yourself: are you really committed to this change process? Will you support it throughout the organisation – even when you meet opposition?

Interesting to see that the need for humanisation in the healthcare sector is more widespread than we’d thought. Hospitals are most definitely not immune to change, you just need to understand the dynamics and design your innovation process accordingly.

Just some thoughts from the field…