Abhisikta Dey

Design Thinking in Healthcare – Can it improve Patient Experiences? Patient-centered approach has been the central principle of healthcare design

Healthcare is a very sensitive topic and the first thing that we associate with it is human connection, compassion and empathy. Every ailing patient want healthcare-2 s o be heard, helped and cared for. Last 3-4 years have seen design to permeate the healthcare industry and hence a shift towards compassion and sympathy. Care givers with a deep emotional understanding in healthcare, think of patients first — as they are the ones who need support and comfort in their most fragile and vulnerable moments. These medical practitioners always need to work on empathy, attention and understanding apart from doing a continuous research on individual patient cases, hacking diseases and learning new medication for constant reinvention. Keeping in mind a constant change, Design thinking has set a strong foothold in health care, leading to the development of new products and the improved design of spaces.
Design Thinking is getting absorbed gradually in the industry with UX-UI Design. Though developing advanced healthcare platform is costly as the barriers to entry are high, constant innovation is still happening. Even though a lot of hospitals have implemented very hi-tech measures like Predictive Analytics, telemedicine etc., most of them have realised that lower-tech measures can also be improved by their ongoing Design Thinking programme.Since design thinking involves continuously testing and refining ideas, feedback is sought early and often, especially from patients.
At the essence of Design Thinking in most hospitals, while the patients talk to the doctor, their in house design thinking team realized that not all patients are looking for the same conversation. They concluded that all the patients fit into one of four categories: Google patients, who are obsessive about information; dominant patients, who like to be firmly in charge of their case; quiet patients, who will say everything is fine, even when it isn’t; and emotional patients, who, more than anything, just want reassurance that their caregivers are looking after them. This program differs from conventional design-thinking work in that its positive impact goes well beyond “the customer.” 1310_Design_thinking_healthcare_Ontario_900_540_80
After researching the different ways in which people respond to fear, the coach on the design-thinking team trained the concerned hospital’s staff to look for the distinctive set of verbal and nonverbal cues, that marked patient behaviour as belonging to one of four types and then respond appropriately. These annual training sessions to identify the four types of patient have also improved the level of communication between several staff members.

It’s a long journey and every health care leader’s mission is to improve patient experiences. With the onset of Design thinking in healthcare sector, decision makers will have to empathize with patients more, think creatively, prototype, and continually test alternate solutions to these problems, to bring about a revolution in this space. Let’s watch out for the next big breakout of Design Thinking practice in this sphere.

Why your business needs design thinking induced customer-centric website?

“If your business is not on the Internet, then your business will be out of business. – Bill Gates”

27+ million searches happen every hour on the Internet. One of those searches could be for you, and for your business. Your organisation’s website is where your customers, employees, business partners, competitors and even investors can find you.

Once you’ve set up your web presence, it needs to be constantly revisited – to keep it in sync with the changing times as well as to cater to your customer’s ever changing needs.

Here are some thoughts to consider for your website:

Customer is the king/queen and should be well informed – Most consumers head straight to a brand’s website for information; they look for a one-stop shop for all the valuable information they need. Your website is the online brochure of your business, products and services, promotions, upcoming events. Making sure relevant information is available, can help influence people’s perception of you and your business. Applying the Design Thinking methodology, the online medium can be refreshed from time to time. Empathising with your customers, for instance, can help make sure you provide value to your loyal customers
24/7 accessibility to cater to a wider market – To be available during off-working hours, with customers having the convenience of browsing through your services at their convenience, is a great selling point. To increase your reach and be more customer centric, you can have a live chat window to answer queries from global clients spontaneously, throughout the day. Along with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, these two-way communication channels help you gain insights into your market that other channels just cannot provide. Grievances vented out through these media are a goldmine of opportunities to enhance your brand value, and retain your customers.
Testimonials from existing customers – Reviews and testimonials on the site play a big role in boosting sales, as it influences a customer’s purchase decision. Actively seeking out your star customers can help you test and iterate new ideas.
Customer support – All too often the FAQs of brands answer fictitious questions that businesses imagine their customers to have. Using the communication channels mentioned above, the actual FAQs can be developed. This will not only help customers save their time, but more importantly, will prevent frustrating experiences. A win-win for your brand recall and your customer.

A well designed, customer centric website is the most cost-effective and impactful tool to attract and service customers. All that is needed is keeping in mind their perspectives.

So, when was the last time you revisited your website? Does it still create a strong business impact? How about incorporating Design Thinking to rethink your web presence?

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Why your small business needs an online presence

Website benefits

Design Thinking – A Roadmap to Success for Startups Design Thinking can help startups understand that they're solving the right problem

Start-ups are new entrants who want to inculcate the best practices in their B2C businesses and Design thinking is one of the best means to it.

Companies and individuals running a start-up business, which have been funded by Indian Angel Network, were a part of the Interactive session on Design Thinking, last week. When it comes to start-ups, micro, and small enterprises, the size of the company and their limited resources target them towards one innovation model rather than the others in order to find their competitive place in the market. Design thinking helps them to find the best possible solution, while attaining the economies of scale.

Design Thinking for Angel Investors

An interactive talk for members of Indian Angel Network was attended by startups and business leaders from different business fraternity like media, IT, finance, fashion and lifestyle. It was a very warm and interactive session, trying to understand the problem from the user’s perspective, discussing their current situation and brainstorming on the relevant solution. Experts at Idea farms, gave the users a broad approach to problem solving, using live video streaming of several business cases and conducting few role plays. The design experts at Idea farms also learnt a lot from this interactive session as they are in a constant mode of reinvention. This session was an eye opener for many entrepreneurs and provided them the roadmap to reach to the next stage, for implementing their ideas. The next step to mastering the practice of Design Thinking is to enrol for a specialised 2- day workshop in Design Thinking.

So folks, let’s get started and master the art of design thinking, to bring unprecedented revolution in our line of business and be on a continuous growth trajectory.

Design Thinking – scaling towards a trending career option

Education, these days are specialized and customer centric, which helps our future generation to understand and decide where is it that their interest lies and what is best for them. People go with the trend and recently the buzzword is “Design Thinking”. We constantly encounter authors, speakers and experts who claim that bringing design thinking into the classroom, can transform education. Now, what is “Design Thinking”? Perhaps it is too vague, too ambivalent and too general for us to understand.

After a detailed analysis and speaking to several industry experts, it was found that in Design Thinking, students solve real problems, think for themselves, discover knowledge and continually revise and change their models and prototypes, just like they might, if working on a project at work. With design thinking, students can learn how to interpret information they’ve learnt, and continue to iterate and experiment different solutions and ideas, thereby broadening their thinking horizon. In the process, students gain the confidence that everyone can be part of designing a better future.
What is in there for the students? As a student, there is a lot of scepticism in their minds, as to the eligibility, structure, duration and cost of the course; whether it will be beneficial and what the business viability factors are for the same. Will students get employed after completing this course? Attending a Design Thinking talk session at any institute clears all doubts. A discussion with the Idea farms team, gives a better insight to assessing the importance of the course and whether it can be applied to our respective line of education or business. The course is designed, keeping in mind the usability and the need of the user.
Online study modules with live video streaming on different business cases, opens up better avenues for the students, as they get to prototype and experiment. This helps the students to inculcate the learning in their main course, which will help them achieve success by finding the best possible solution.
So friends! Let’s all think smart and brain storm on our varied ideas to achieve the maximum returns on investment. Look out this space for more information on these courses soon….