Kaiser Permanente Innovation Consultancy
Bringing human-centered design to the largest integrated medical provider in the country.
Work done as a service Designer at Kaiser Permanente's Innovation Consultancy
Key Projects
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Reinventing the financial experience of healthcare With the rise of high deductible health plans, members are paying more out of pocket for their care than they ever have. This project aimed to understand, envision and test what a member-centric financial experience would look like.
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Exploring the role of small-scale spaces in care delivery Healthcare systems are known for large medical office buildings that deliver every service under one roof. This model of delivering care is becoming increasingly out of step with the experiences people expect from healthcare. How might we use smaller spaces to provide tailored, streamlined experiences?
My role as a Service Designer
Working at KP requires me to be a generalist designer. I am involved in all stages of the design process, from framing a project, conducting research, prototyping solutions in the field and sharing the work across the company. While I can't go into too much detail about my specific projects, here is a sampling of the methods I use at KP.
Project Framing
My projects are rarely given to the team with a clear focus, the question we're given can be as vague as "how can we improve the member financial experience?" I've spent a signficant amount of time planning project schedules, defining focus areas in wildly complicated problem spaces and even defining team roles that would help the work.
How I've framed projects
Research
I use a mix of design research methods to gain insight into member and staff's experiences of problems. The firsthand stories experienced by members and staff infuse empathy across the company and help center design directions in true user needs.
How I've done design research
Synthesis
Once we've generated a massive amount of data from our design research, our team has to make sense of it all to determine key stories and design directions. I've used a variety of visualizing and storytelling techniques to bring others into our design process.
How I've done synthesis
Ideation
Once we've generated a massive amount of data from our design research, our team has to make sense of it all to determine key stories and design directions. I've used a variety of visualizing and storytelling techniques to bring others into our design process.
How I've done ideation
Prototyping
Concepts may sound good in a corporate office, but fall completely short when tried with members and staff. My personal favorite part of the design process was working in the field to explore, refine and iterate prototype ideas to improve experiences.
How I've prototyped
Project Outcomes
My work took the first steps into wicked problems so that KP could take giant leaps to improve them. The work plants the seeds for entirely new strategies and approaches to experiences in healthcare, and shows the dozens of stakeholders involved in our project a new, more empathetic way of working. For example, my work with Project Sense proved through prototyping that members could get a text message with the cost of their radiology services before a visit instead of waiting two months for a bill in the mail.
Some outcomes of our work
“You almost forget you have live people [experiencing this], and so you hear the real voices and you hear the families walking in, and it just brings us back to remembering that we're dealing with people who need care, and how can we best meet their need? And be empathetic, understanding and simple about it.”
– A Revenue Cycle staff member describing our fieldwork collaboration