Designing for good: UX and social change
For a while I’ve been thinking about the impact design can have on solving real problems for people and driving social change. There are many serious problems facing the UK public sector today and in the absence of a spare several billion pounds to throw at it, how about we start thinking creatively about some design innovations to improve experiences?
The other day I read about creating a better A&E in the UK — a design challenge by the Design Council to provide a safer, calmer environment for staff in A&E, reducing violence and aggression, through a better experience for patients. Violence and aggression towards frontline hospital staff is a massive problem, estimated to cost the NHS at least £69 million a year. The project was led by PearsonLloyd (case study here) and the key insight was a simple one: people become frustrated in A&E because of a lack of clear information and guidance. Following extensive patient research, three solutions were developed:
- The Guidance Solution: A comprehensive package of information about the department, waiting times and treatment processes via on-site environmental signage, patient leaflets, and digital platforms.
- The People Solution: A programme of reflective practice designed to better support NHS frontline staff to manage and learn from incidents of violence and aggression.
- The A&E Toolkit: A package of information and guidance for NHS staff who want to develop and deliver a better service in effective and inspiring environments.
The Guidance Solution has been implemented in several A&Es and 88% of patients felt that it clarified the A&E process — there was a 50% reduction in threatening behaviour and aggression following the installations. This is a brilliant example of insight-driven innovation.
Yesterday I went to a UXPA event about healthcare innovation and it blew my mind. Here were incredibly inspiring examples of design actually helping to solve those real problems I mentioned — issues that impact the quality of a person’s life, like not having a proper provision of care or living a reduced existence because you have to rely on clunky, outdated tools to manage your medical condition.
I was very interested in Jack Godfrey Wood from Native Design talking about vision being really important. The Henry Ford quote about giving people faster horses if they’d been asked what they want gets banded around quite a bit, but I think the sentiment holds as true today as it did then. To truly innovate, sometimes you need stop tinkering with a product to make small improvements and instead revisit it entirely, as just tinkering can make you lose sight of the problem you’re trying to solve. His talk about redesigning colostomy bags and female catheters, and how these new products vastly improved the quality of people’s lives, were great examples of this.
The other thing I found really interesting about some of the case studies was how massive changes were made through the simplest of approaches. Elsa del Gado from Blue Latitude Health spoke about a COPD Telephony Patient Service whereby patients got a call each week on their telephone (an existing product in their house) to answer five questions about their health. Depending on those answers, they would either then get a call or visit from their doctor, helping to treat any problems before they escalated, and reducing A&E visits.
James King from Science Practice spoke about citizen science and music as therapy for dementia patients. This doesn’t go through clinical trials, but it’s making a real difference. Neil Maiden gave us an insight into mobile tech for residential dementia care and digital support for people-centred care — his case study about introducing Yammer as a tool for residential staff workers to enter in their patient notes, and the results this produced in terms of more regular, detailed patient documentation, was incredibly thought-provoking. So often, through the ubiquitous nature of apps, digital designers can fall into the trap of thinking an app is the answer, but we don’t need to reinvent the wheel all the time — choose tools that people are already familiar with and make them work better for them.
It’s not just the healthcare industry that gets me excited. The Government Digital Service has been changing the way we interact with government products for several years now — in 2013 it won Design of the Year for its self-service website GOV.UK, making it as easy as possible for users to find information they are looking for. It was up against some pretty hard hitters, sexy design you might say, but it won, rightly, because it makes life better for millions of people. Another thing worth mentioning here is that one of their design principles is ‘being open makes things better’. The work at GDS is widely documented, including their processes and findings along each step of the way. Collaborating, and not ring-fencing information, is a key way of how product teams can learn from each other to improve services.
I’m so encouraged by all of the above examples, and super inspired as I start out on my UX career.
