Teaching Healthcare Design. Methods for Empathy

Healthcare design requires empathetic understanding among all stakeholders and consequently the development of design for empathy. While design anthropological approaches are broadly discussed, spanning from social design to social innovation, analysis methods for human insights are less widely discussed in design. By evidence of a design course focusing on shared decision making (SDM), this paper promotes a blended set of methods, supporting enhanced understanding amongst stakeholders. The empirical data and the comparison with contemporary SDM studies indicate that student designers were able to address some of the most vividly discussed issues in the field: the adaption of SDM to the diversity of patients, the flow of information between the different stakeholders and the general knowledge on SDM by clinicians and the wider public. This paper provides design educators with a series of methods for empathy, encouraging a transformation of design research data into level-headed solutions applicable to healthcare design.