Designing for wellbeing

A patient portal displays previous and upcoming appointments, allowing
patients to confirm or cancel.
The project team experienced a radical change in the scope of the problem
as the task changed from a system-centric design of an effective SMS
reminder system to a user-centric understanding of how to increase the
cooperation and communication between healthcare personnel and their
clients. This had the potential to reduce the number of no-show cases, but
also to contribute to a better service for citizens. In terms of the designer-user
social distance, the no-show example demonstrated how co-design enables
designers to dissect a complex problem and challenge the seemingly obvious
initial brief. The team learned that the current practice of threatening
no-show clients with penalties, which is an attempt to solve a variety of
chiefly individual problems with a one-size-fits-all solution, does not work.
The current tone of voice in the health centres’ communication is cold
and bureaucratic compared to the warm and empathic identity of healthcare
personnel. The proposed concept reduces the system-user distance
by using the patient database for empathic personalisation of reminder
messages. It enables the adaptation of the system to the specific needs of
each clinic by acknowledging the current workarounds and “hacks” used
by the units and embracing them. The co-design treatment of the no-show
context helped to re-think the solution from penalising no-show patients
as perpetrators failing to comply with the rules of the system, to treating
each no-show case with care and applying a more humane interaction
aiming at significantly reducing the alienation of healthcare personnel
and citizens.
Maternity and child care – making self-service desirable
“Neuvola” is the Finnish name for public healthcare clinics whose role is to
guide, train and advise expectant and new mothers and their families during
pregnancy and after childbirth. The aim is to secure the best possible health
for the expectant mother, foetus, newborn and entire family. The student
133 · Reducing social distance through co-design