Thoughts

Over the years, I have been lucky enough to work on many design teams and have also been in place environments that hire designers as researchers. As a student of industrial design, I learned a lesson about research that I did not get to study this discipline would have taken me much longer to learn if I was just a digital product designer. That lesson is that the best insights come from getting inspired from being in the field and observing what people actually do! Not endless studies but a deep observation. This is one of the main differences between design research (descendant from industrial design) and user research (descendant from social sciences).

This is my first-ever patent. In mid-2017, I started working on a home-built product for claims processing. We received the patent, in October 2022, for the novel ways we achieved some of the highest industry accuracy and automation in the healthcare industry; and the innovative human-centered approach to processing claims when they fell out of automation. This system also allowed for innovative value-based plan designs that are hard to administer accurately by traditional claims systems.

As a hiring manager, it is helpful to identify what you need from a service designer, the types of designers on the market, and how to target the right background through your job description. Hopefully, this article will help you target your search and identify what archetype to recruit.

Whether you’ve landed your first job or are just interested in learning more about the space, you may have a lot of questions about how design in healthcare is different from other industries. In my time working as a designer in healthcare, I've learned a lot about how to be successful in this industry. Here are a few things I wish I’d known when I started out:

I'm just back from 7 days of cycling, totaling 545 miles. Our team of 20 raised, the Carols, $207,924.50. To put the generosity of our donors in context, each rider has to raise $3K to ride and because of you, I raised $12,500. I wouldn't have had this opportunity to give back to my community without my wonderful donors. I wanted to share a bit more about my journey with you all. I hope this encourages others to join AIDS/LifeCycle next year and shines a light on this unique event.

As a designer in healthcare it's critical to deeply understand the ecosystem and the leverage points one can use to make change and create an impact. Healthcare in the US is one if not the most complex service, regulator, and supplier ecosystems in the world. These books will help anyone new to healthcare better understand these ecosystems and the opportunities for innovation within them.

Collective Health was selected in the 2017 IxDA Interaction awards as a finalist in the optimizing for our member experience. While we were not selected as the winner in this category it was an honor to be selected as a finalist for more details on our entry can be found on the IxDA site

My work on Collective Health’s member experience was honored with an honorable mention in the 2016 Fast Co Co.Design awards.

I had the pleasure of doing a interview with Hayden Mills on his series Healthcare + Design about my views on design and my experience of designing at Collective Health.

Today’s products and services are delivered through systems of touchpoints that cross channels and blend both digital and human interactions. The service blueprint is a diagram that allows designers to look beyond the product and pixels to examine the systems that bring a customer’s experience to life.