via Aesthetics of Life, Tastes Fine

The user-centred approach Sohrab Vossoughi of Ziba speaks about in this post could apply to all health care systems. The fact remains that a healthy workforce is a more profitable one. Vossoughi dubs the new era the Age of Empowerment and groups health care experience innovation into three groups: self-care, service innovation and Internet-enabled.

User-centric experience innovations need not be relegated to businesses using design to establish a loyal bond with their customers. Applying time-tested design methods to a national institution like health care can help ensure that our citizens not only have affordable care, but that the quality of the care actually empowers them to live the lives they desire.

via The Design Directory …

David Kester, Chief Executive of the UK Design Council; Professor Jeremy Myerson, Professor of Design Studies at the Royal College of Art; Professor Gloria Laycock, Director of the UCL Centre for Security and Crime Science; and Professor Lorraine Gamman, Director of the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central St Martins School of Art and Design. What do these four designers have in common? They’re all crimefighters.

“Designing Out Crime” is the UK’s effort to reduce lawbreaking through clever and innovative design.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker says:

“…Designing out crime is about sustainable and innovative design of products, spaces and places to make crime unattractive and make communities feel safer… We must maximise the influence good design can have in the fight against crime.”

Ian McInnes from the Association of Chief Police Officers Crime Prevention Initiatives:

“There are excellent examples to show designing-out crime works. The police service supports the Alliance to build on these examples and encourage more designers and manufacturers to address crime risk at the design stage. Neither crime nor unattractive add-on security need be a regular consequence of purchasing homes, consumer technology, or services.”

So how exactly do they do it? Details are too numerous to list here, but you can check out the full-fledged PR description at this link.

India has just published its first design policy. Does something strike you as odd about this? Perhaps if I were to tell you that Ireland has no design policy you would be surprised?

Of course it grows out of a realisation that they cannot compete forever either as a low cost producer or a high-tech sweat shop. In short, it is going to establish design and innovation centres around the country, 4 new design colleges, design courses in all institutes of technology and a national Design Council.

The policy is good. It is coordinated, collaborative and focussed; how long before Ireland recognises the need to follow suit?

It seems uncharitable to carp about such an extraordinary investment in the future of the country but I cannot help but look the proverbial gift horse of the NDP in the mouth.
In the race to invest in R&D it seems that we are forgetting one critical constituent; the user.

Much of the NDP builds on the foundations of the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, an important but dull document. In so doing it focuses quite rightly on the importance of R&D, but as we have observed before, investment in R&D is not sufficient in itself. You need to find ways of making sure that the investment is commercialised in the best way.

Both documents continue to create a technocracy that ignores the user, the human element. Not a short term problem, but it will have an impact on our competitiveness in the long run if we cannot turn world-class R&D into attractive, desirable products and services.

If you can receive BBC2 then put your supper on a tray tonight at 2100 and watch the second part of this fascinating three part story of Gerry Robinson trying to sort out some of the problems in an NHS hospital in Rotherham. The final part goes out at the same time tomorrow (Wednesday).

I find this fascinating from a design perspective. In the end, the solutions he is identifying are user focused and based on insights from employees. The obstacles he encounters are all about organisational inertia and accepted practice. How often have design practitioners encountered the same problems?

There is a small but well formed resource to back this up courtesy of the Open University.