During my A-levels, I was determined to explore a diverse range of subjects to keep my options open for future studies. Among my choices of biology, chemistry, and English literature, I made an unexpected decision: product design! It might have seemed like a quirky choice back then, but little did I know how invaluable it would become in my journey of managing clinical pathways and service development.
To my pleasant surprise, product design's principles have proven to be a guiding light throughout my service development projects. I found myself consistently drawing from the creative insights and problem-solving approaches that the subject taught me.
One particular service development saw us reduce waiting times for therapy from a staggering 47 weeks down to just 12 weeks with no waits for assessment! Witnessing such a tangible impact on patient care fuelled my passion for incorporating design thinking into healthcare development.
The NHS, being one of the largest healthcare systems in the world, faces numerous challenges in delivering high-quality, patient-centred care while operating within limited resources. These challenges include increasing demand for services, changing patient expectations, complex workflows, and the need for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In this context, Design Thinking offers a fresh perspective and a systematic approach to service development that goes beyond traditional methods.
What is design thinking?
At its core, Design Thinking is a human-centred approach that focuses on understanding the needs, desires, and experiences of end-users. It encourages collaboration, empathy, and iterative prototyping to create innovative solutions.
The key principles align closely with the core values of the NHS, such as patient-centeredness, inclusivity, and continuous improvement. By adopting these principles, service development work can foster a culture of innovation and co-creation, where diverse perspectives are valued, and ideas are tested and refined based on real-world feedback.
Design Thinking Principles
Empathise
To truly understand the needs, desires, and pain points of patients and service users, it is crucial to embark on an empathy-building journey. Conduct interviews, observe user interactions, and gather qualitative data to gain deep insights into their experiences, preferences, and challenges. By immersing ourselves in the patients world, we can develop a comprehensive understanding of their context and the improvements required. There may well be some information that you've already collected that can help with this process such as friends and family feedback questionnaires and direct feedback received by the team.
Define
Building upon the insights gained in the empathy phase, it is essential to clearly define the problem or opportunity that needs to be addressed. Articulate the users' needs and pain points, and identify the specific aspects of the service that require improvement. This step helps set a clear direction and ensures a focused approach to service improvement.
Ideate
Embrace a culture of creativity and come up with lots of ideas – good, bad and ugly, to generate potential solutions. This could be through group brainstorming sessions, ideation workshops, and collaborative efforts with diverse stakeholders. This step allows for exploration of multiple possibilities, ultimately leading to novel approaches in service development. In the ideate stage quantity is more important than quality! Sticky notes are your friend!
Prototype
Bring the proposed service improvements to life through the creation of simple prototypes or mock-ups. These prototypes should be quick and cost-effective to develop, enabling early-stage testing and feedback. For example, one of the ideas for bringing down the wait times in our service was to re-design the referral form. To test this, we created a first draft referral form and shared this with key referrers to gather initial feedback. Knowing that the first form wasn’t the final version, allowed us to move away from perfection. By visualising and experiencing the potential solutions, valuable insights were gained, leading to further refinement in the service design.
Test
Engage with users to gather feedback on the prototypes and rigorously test the proposed service enhancements. Conduct user testing sessions, surveys, or interviews to evaluate the effectiveness, usability, and desirability of the solutions. Actively listen to user feedback and iterate on the design based on their input. Testing ensures that the service design aligns with real user needs and expectations.
For some parts of our re-design, the pathway changes were to internal processes – the testing phase had one person from each part of the pathway from admin, to therapists to lead clinicians to test the process from their viewpoint, later testing rolled this out to the whole team.
Implement
With a refined service design in hand, it's time to plan for implementation. Develop a comprehensive strategy, considering resources, timelines, and stakeholder engagement. Collaborate with relevant teams to ensure a seamless rollout of the enhanced service, with a focus on delivering tangible benefits to users.
With our service re-design, we started implementing the changes in the smallest clinic so we were able to make changes and enhancements without impacting too many children and families, we slowly rolled out to the entire locality.
Iterate
Design thinking is an iterative process, and continuous improvement is paramount. Regularly collect feedback, measure the impact of the implemented service enhancements, and remain responsive to evolving user needs and market trends. This ongoing assessment and adaptation ensure that services remain relevant, effective, and continually aligned with user expectations.
Final words
By embracing the power of design thinking, we can create services that are truly user-centric, innovative, and tailored to meet the needs of patients and service users. The iterative nature of this approach guarantees continuous improvement, allowing services to remain agile and responsive in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. In this way we can harness the potential of design thinking to drive meaningful change and deliver exceptional care within the NHS.
I would highly recommend the book: The Design Thinking Toolbox by Michael Lewrick. It's like a friendly companion on your service development journey!!
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