Healthcare Service Design
Role: Design Researcher + User Testing
Problem
Going off to college and attending orientation is an exciting but overwhelming experience for many students; for students with allergies (SWAs), even more so. Not all colleges are equipped to meet the needs of students with allergies and most often, other students aren't aware of the risks SWAs face. The safety net that parents and friends once provided SWAs when they were young is now gone. Additionally, SWAs want to fit in and enjoy their college experience but are burdened with having to educate their peers about their allergies.
Solution
My teammates and I design an educational service that leverages on campus resources to educate incoming students to recognize anaphylaxis and how to properly use an Epipen. Realizing that orientation is an overwhelming time, the service will be implemented specifically when students are waiting line and not otherwise preoccupied with events. The goal is to recreate the safety net that students with allergies are accustomed to by educating the general student populace about the severity of allergies and how to react when a student has a reaction.
Value Proposition
By training incoming freshman during orientation, we are helping increase allergy awareness on campus overall. This helps students with allergies feel safe on campus and reduces their burden of having to educate their peers about allergies. This also serves the university's goals of inclusion and safety on campus.
Picture of my teammates and I at our final presentation where we demoed our service for different stakeholders
Teammates: (all MS Engineering Design Innovation)
Julia Savich
Ryan Callaghan
Hua Chin
Personal Contribution:
Interviewed different university stakeholders and young people with allergies
Prototyped service by acting as a "student allergy trainer"
Developed insights based on user research and understanding of stakeholder needs
- Designed the map outlining the final service and "DISHES" allergy symptom poster
Teammate Ryan and I interviewing a college student to understand what they know about allergies
Needs Finding and User Research
The goal of research was two fold:
1. First, to understand the needs, goals, and responsibilities of the incoming students with allergies (SWA) and all of the different stakeholders at the university.
2. Second, to outline a students journey through orientation, their feelings throughout that journey, and the stakeholders a student would interact with.
Opportunity Identification
Through our research, we identified key insights and found an opportunity area: “How might we educate peers during orientation and remove the burden of doing so from students with allergies?”.
Key Observations:
Students with allergies must recreate their safety net at college, something their parents had previously built for them.
Students are burdened with having to educate their peers about their allergies.
- The orientation is one of the few times throughout college that all or a majority of the incoming student body are together in one place, creating an opportunity to educate a large number of students at once. However, students are often bombarded with information at orientation and a limited number of opportunities to grab students attention.
Design Imperatives and Prototyping
Prototype 1 - Intercepting students at student center and training them individually
Prototype 3 - Running an Allergy Booth at a design expo to simulate formal training that can occur during new student orientation
Prototype 2 - wearing matching shirts to look like we were part of an official organization, went out and trained groups of students
Prototype 4 - Trained people while they were waiting in line to pet a miniature pony, simulation of what students might be doing during orientation when waiting to get student IDs or lunch
Based on our research and insights, we developed high-level design imperatives that we used to guide our service concepts. We designed and tested four different service prototypes. The different concepts all consisted of training students how to use an Epipen and how to recognize anaphylaxis but the training itself varied in setting, size of group, and the props used. The props consisted of a potato or orange to practice using an epipen and a poster with the acronym “D.I.S.H.E.S.” to help people remember the common symptoms associated with anaphylaxis. .
High-Level Design Imperatives
Service must leverage on campus resources to educate incoming students on how to recognize anaphylaxis and how to use an epipen.
Service must take advantage of “boring” or unscheduled time during orientation to train students so they don’t have to miss other events.
Information provided must be delivered in an concise and interactive way so it’s more memorable.
- Information must be reference-able so students can refer to it in the future.
Final Deliverable & Impact
We found that the “Waiting in line” training with a catchy sign, the DISHES symptom poster, and energetic trainers was the most effective method for training a large volume of people, in a short period of time, without taking them away from other activities. This last part was important because what we learned from our research was that people were interested in learning how to use an epipen but didn't want to miss out on other events at orientation to be trained. Below is a video of my team and I demonstrating the "Waiting in line" training for our final presentation to stakeholders as well as an outline of our final service workflow.
Outline of final service workflow
Bonus content:
We presented our final service design to Dr. Ruchi Gupta (pediatrician and project sponsor) and to high-level university stakeholders. As part of our presentation, we designed the entry into the building to be like “the first time a student steps on campus”, to get our guests into the college orientation spirit. My contribution was to recreate the famous Northwestern Arch, pictured to the right with my fellow builders.