Design thinking in healthcare leads to a better understanding of the end-user and ultimately better products and services. Some of the most innovative companies leading healthcare technology have design thinking at the forefront of their product development cycle.
Whether it’s for a website, billboard design, search engine ad, or landing page, design thinking helps with the development of solutions for existing problems. Penji can help you move forward towards those solutions by applying design thinking. So, what is design thinking, and why does it matter for your healthcare company? Plus, know how you can use that for your company.
Design Thinking: An Overview
Before we discuss how you can apply design thinking for your healthcare company, learn what design thinking is.
According to Interaction Design, Design thinking is a problem-solving method where you keep the end-user in mind. This method can help you find alternatives that you may have overlooked in the past. And by applying this, you can further understand your consumers and patients. Plus, you can even use this method repeatedly to provide better solutions to the challenges your target audience might face as well.
Healthcare companies can benefit from this. Since you want to provide quality care or services or products, it’s only right that you should keep their interests and needs at all times.
To understand design thinking at its core, you must look at the five main phases that make up the whole method.
Five Phases of Design Thinking
Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon outlined one of the first formal models of the Design Thinking process. In his 1969 seminal text on design methods, “The Sciences of the Artificial,” the model was largely influential in shaping some of the most widely used Design Thinking process models today. Here is the five-stage Design Thinking model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school).
1. Empathize with your users.
Consult with experts to understand the experiences and motivations of consumers. Having empathy is crucial during the design process. The empathic design allows for marketers and designers to put aside their own assumptions and think solely on the customer experience.
2. Define user needs and problems.
Put together what you learned in the Empathize stage and think about how you can define the problem in a human-centered manner. This stage will help your team come up with a plan on how to properly assist the consumer so that they have a smooth experience.
3. Ideate by challenging assumptions and create ideas for innovative solutions.
At this stage, your design team will be generating thoughts on how to approach the problem. Look for alternate solutions to the problem by holding brainstorming sessions.
4. Prototype to start creating solutions.
Prototypes are scaled-down versions of the end product that are used to test internally. This phase is purely experimental and there is still a search for the best solution. Based on the user’s experience, the prototypes will be either accepted, improved and re-examined or rejected.
5. Test possible solutions.
Alterations and refinements are made even when the end product is fully complete. You’ll find new solutions that will help the user’s experience and tweaks can be made. During this final phase, you’ll have a deep understanding of the product and the user.
Now that you know the five phases of design thinking, here’s why and how you can apply design thinking in a healthcare setting.
Accessibility
By taking a human-centered approach to design, you must understand how accessible your product is to your consumer. Healthcare is a deeply personal experience for those involved. You can apply design thinking to your digital presence like your website. By thinking about how your visitors will navigate your site, you’ll be able to prioritize the information they’re looking for.
Design thinking can also be taken into interactions with consumers and patients. When they interact with your marketing, the information and process should be clear. From finding your contact information to speaking to a representative, their experience should be smooth.
Quality
The quality of your design work plays a role in customer experience. A person is more likely to trust a brand with high-quality design work versus poor designs. You never know when potential consumers or patients will come in contact with your brand so you must stay on top of the designs at all times.
Knowing that users are usually vulnerable, they require every part of the process to be of the best quality. For example, many people prefer to purchase name brand medication instead of generic. This is because they are loyal and have built trust in the brand, even though the ingredients are the same. That is the power of quality design, marketing, and packaging.
Credibility
Graphic design is a need by any business. It’s one way you can establish trust and professionalism. Together with accessibility and quality, you can raise your credibility towards your consumers or patients. They will then see you as a reliable source, an authority perhaps. Plus, you could even build customer loyalty, as well.
For example, you can become a credible source by posting reliable health information. One way of doing this is by posting statistics or data as infographics on social media. Another way of approaching this is to use testimonials or reviews from consumers or patients. You can integrate them on your landing pages or ads.
Strategies in Applying Design Thinking
Geotargeting
Having your marketing custom to the location of where your consumers are will give them a more personalized experience. It really depends on where your healthcare products or services are delivered. If you are not serving a particular area, it would not make sense to market there.
By geo-targeting, you’ll be able to connect with the right people and they’ll have access to your product or service. Sometimes, there are different ways to target certain areas. Language, ailments, target markets, and more can vary depending on where you are. By learning about the audience, you’ll be able to create a custom marketing strategy that speaks to the residents in the area.
Landing Pages
Aside from having a website, creating individual landing pages drive new patients to your healthcare product or service. Again, the quality of the design will have a factor in encouraging or deterring potential patients to get in contact with you.
By having a landing page, you’ll have the opportunity to collect information in an easy and simple way. It also gives potential consumers and patients an opportunity to call, email, or fill out a form so you can contact them. The messaging must be targeted and clear. Though a landing page will have less information than your website, there will be fewer distractions that may be overwhelming to visitors.
Products
At the end of the day, your product is the most important part of the process. Not only does it have to work, it has to work well. If your marketing is on point, your web design is beautiful, your ads are drawing in consumers, but your product or service does not function as advertised, consumers will remember. Whatever you’re selling, you have to be confident that users will be happy.
Healthcare is a tough industry to be in already. The only time you will see patients or customers will be when there’s something wrong. And it’s your job to make them feel better. And with that in mind, the process and end product play a big factor in their healing. Make the user experience a good one.
Apply Design Thinking By Making Penji Your Design Partner
You can consider graphic design to help solve some challenges you might face in your company or practice. For that, you need a reliable graphic design service to produce compelling and high-quality designs. And you can entrust your designs to Penji, an unlimited graphic design service.
Companies like CVS Pharmacy and Virtua have tapped Penji for their design work. You can depend on Penji to provide the same quality experience. It’s so your company can also reach your patients and consumers. Plus, you can let Penji work on your designs while you manage your company.
By signing up for a Penji subscription, you can use those designs to connect with your audience online and offline. This way, you get more patients flocking to your practice. Or perhaps, consumers might buy more products that would change the quality of their life.
Subscribe to Penji now, and you can start requesting all the designs you need. Whether it’s for a marketing campaign or branding purposes, Penji has got you covered. For only $499/mo, get access to all design categories like illustrations, web designs, and more! Get started today and try the platform 100% risk-free for 15 days.
