Design Thinking: A Creative Solution for Complex Healthcare Challenges

Design is often misunderstood. Many people associate it with aesthetics—making things look good. While that’s a part of it, design is much deeper than surface-level beauty. At its core, design is about solving problems creatively. It’s a discipline that helps us approach complex challenges with a new mindset, particularly in healthcare, where solutions must be both practical and innovative. In this article, we'll explore how the design process, specifically the Double Diamond model, can be applied to healthcare, and why this method can unlock new, meaningful changes in health systems.

What Is Design?

Design isn’t about decoration; it’s about creation. It’s the application of a specific mindset and skillset to solve problems. It’s about crafting informed, inclusive, and innovative solutions that respond to real human needs. Think about the last time you visited a hospital. Was it easy to navigate the space? Were the forms easy to understand? Was there clear communication between healthcare staff and patients? These are just a few of the many aspects of healthcare where design can make a difference.

When used in health systems, design can be applied to products, services, environments, or even communication methods. It is not restricted to one area—it can link different elements of the healthcare system into a cohesive, user-centred experience. In a fragmented health system, where patients and providers often struggle to connect effectively, design offers a structured way to create meaningful and lasting improvements.

The Double Diamond Model: Designing the Right Things and Designing Things Right

The British Design Council developed the?Double Diamond model?to illustrate the design process’s key phases. This model emphasizes two critical cycles in design thinking—diverging and converging—to ensure that the final solution is both appropriate and effective.

• Design the Right Things: Discover and Define

The first diamond represents the process of?understanding the problem. In the healthcare context, this phase is about discovering the root challenges, engaging with patients and healthcare providers to understand their needs, and gathering unstructured findings. Once enough information has been collected, the focus shifts to?defining the problem clearly?and identifying opportunities for improvement. This is crucial because healthcare systems are often bogged down by assumptions. By deeply investigating challenges, we ensure that we’re addressing the right problems.

• Design Things Right: Develop and Deliver

Once you have defined the challenge, the next diamond focuses on?developing solutions?and refining them. This is where creative ideation comes in—generating multiple ideas that can potentially solve the problem. Importantly, this phase is iterative, meaning ideas are continuously tested, adapted, and refined. In health system, this is where prototypes of new health products, services, or processes can be tested directly with end users. The final step is?converging on the best solution?and delivering it in a way that ensures long-term impact.

The beauty of this model is that it’s not linear. It allows for feedback loops and ongoing testing, ensuring that the proposed solution is both desirable and effective in real-world conditions.

The Design Mindset: Engaging People Early

One of the most powerful elements of design thinking is its focus on?engaging people early in the process. Instead of assuming what a patient or healthcare provider needs, design thinking involves them in the development of the solution. This human-centered approach helps bridge the gap between what healthcare systems provide and what patients truly need.

For example, in a healthcare setting, a team might start by observing how nurses interact with a new electronic health record system. By engaging those who use the system every day, designers can identify frustrations or inefficiencies that might not be obvious to administrators or software developers. From there, the team can ideate and prototype solutions, testing them with users to see what works before scaling it.

The Design Skill set: Collaboration Across Disciplines

Designers bring a unique skill set to the table, but solving healthcare challenges requires collaboration across multiple disciplines. Like healthcare professionals, designers specialize in different areas—service design, product design, communication design, or interaction design. Each specialization offers tools to solve specific challenges, but it is through collaboration that true innovation occurs.

• Service Design?focuses on planning and organizing people, infrastructure, and materials to improve interactions between patients and healthcare providers.
• Interaction Design?is concerned with how users interact with digital tools, such as making health apps or record systems easy to use.
• Product Design?helps build medical devices, wearable health technologies, or everyday health products that better integrate into patients’ lives.
• Communication Design?ensures health messages are delivered clearly and consistently, enhancing public health campaigns or in-hospital signage systems.

Design, much like medicine, is not one-size-fits-all. By engaging diverse skills and disciplines, design thinking allows healthcare teams to tailor solutions to specific challenges, creating a more personalized and effective approach to health system.

Closing Thoughts

Design is much more than aesthetics. It’s a problem-solving discipline that has the potential to transform healthcare by bringing people’s needs into the process. By using models like the Double Diamond, healthcare teams can ensure they’re not only solving the right problems but also solving them in the right way. This isn’t just about developing shiny new products; it’s about making real, impactful changes in the lives of patients and healthcare providers.

As we look toward a future filled with increasingly complex health challenges, design thinking offers a creative and collaborative way forward. So, how might you incorporate design thinking into your next healthcare project? Could the Double Diamond help guide you in creating more human-centred solutions? The possibilities are endless when you start with empathy and lead with innovation.

What challenges in your healthcare system do you think could benefit from a design thinking approach? Have you ever been involved in a project that used design thinking? Share your experiences and thoughts—we’d love to hear them!