Thinking Outside the Box: Innovation Techniques for Health Product Designers

In health innovation, thinking creatively isn’t just a bonus—it’s essential. Whether designing medical devices, assistive technologies, or digital health solutions, innovators must solve complex problems with fresh, effective ideas. However, generating truly novel solutions can be challenging, especially in a highly regulated and evidence-driven sector.

By embracing structured ideation techniques, such as ‘Morph’ sheets and the Design Council’s Double Diamond process, health innovators can systematically break through creative barriers. This article explores these methods and offers additional strategies to foster innovation in health product design and development.

The Power of the Double Diamond

The Double Diamond process, developed by the UK’s Design Council, is a structured framework for innovation. It consists of four phases:

1. Discover – Identifying user needs, market gaps, and underlying problems through research.
2. Define – Narrowing down insights to a clear, specific problem statement.
3. Develop – Exploring multiple solutions through ideation and prototyping.
4. Deliver – Refining and finalising the best solution for implementation.

By following this process, health innovators ensure they are solving the right problems in the right way. But how can we enhance the ‘Develop’ phase to maximise creativity?

‘Morph’ Sheets: Rapid Idea Generation

A practical and visually engaging method for idea generation is the ‘Morph’ sheet. This technique involves:

• Identifying a specific problem based on research.
• Using an A3 sheet of paper divided into a grid.
• Sketching 39 different solutions—however small, simple, or radical.

This process forces designers to think beyond their initial ideas and explore less obvious solutions. By eliminating the pressure to be ‘correct’ and prioritising volume, Morph sheets help uncover unexpected directions.

Additional Techniques for Expanding Creative Thinking

To complement Morph sheets and the Double Diamond process, consider the following techniques:

1. SCAMPER Method

SCAMPER is an acronym for seven techniques that modify an existing idea:

• Substitute: Can you replace a material, function, or component?
• Combine: What if two existing solutions were merged?
• Adapt: Could a concept from another industry apply here?
• Modify: What if you exaggerated or minimised an aspect?
• Put to another use: Can the solution serve a different purpose?
• Eliminate: What if you removed unnecessary elements?
• Reverse/Rearrange: What happens if you flip the process or change the order?

SCAMPER is particularly useful when iterating on existing concepts in health product design.

2. Analogy Thinking

Borrowing ideas from unrelated fields can yield surprising insights. For example:

• How could nature inspire a more ergonomic medical device? (e.g., biomimicry)
• What can automotive safety teach us about patient monitoring systems?
• Could a gaming interface make rehabilitation exercises more engaging?

By drawing parallels between industries, analogy thinking helps designers escape conventional mindsets.

3. Role Reversal

Put yourself in the shoes of different stakeholders:

• How would a child redesign this product?
• What if a clinician had to use it with one hand?
• What if the patient had no prior medical knowledge?

This method ensures solutions remain user-centred and challenge assumptions about usability.

4. Crazy 8s

A fast-paced ideation exercise where you fold an A3 sheet into eight sections and sketch a new idea every 60 seconds. This forces quick thinking and reduces over-analysis, generating raw concepts that can be refined later.

5. Worst Possible Idea

By intentionally brainstorming terrible solutions, teams often stumble upon useful insights. The key is flipping these ‘bad’ ideas into something workable. For example:

• Bad Idea: A prosthetic limb that’s too heavy to lift.
• Flipped Insight: How can we make it ultra-lightweight?

Bringing It All Together

Health innovators must balance creativity with practicality. By integrating methods like Morph sheets, SCAMPER, analogy thinking, and role reversal, they can generate diverse ideas while ensuring solutions remain functional and user-centred.

The best innovations often arise from structured creativity—embracing constraints while pushing boundaries. So next time you’re faced with a tough design challenge, grab an A3 sheet, sketch 39 solutions, and start thinking outside the box.

Some ideation methods are particularly well-suited for health innovators due to the complexity, regulations, and human impact of healthcare solutions. Here are a few that stand out:

1. Morphological Analysis (‘Morph’ Sheets) – Best for Generating Volume of Ideas

Again the ‘Morph’ sheet approach is particularly effective for health product innovation because it encourages a breadth of solutions before narrowing down. In healthcare, where usability, safety, and effectiveness are all crucial, generating 39 different solutions ensures you don’t settle on the first (and often least innovative) idea.

Why it’s great for health innovation:

• Forces designers to explore beyond obvious solutions.
• Encourages rapid, visual ideation, which helps with complex medical problems.
• Supports incremental and radical innovation—both of which are valuable in healthcare.

2. Design Thinking – Best for User-Centred Health Solutions

Design Thinking is particularly relevant in health innovation as it focuses on deep user research, empathy, and iterative testing. It aligns well with the Double Diamond process and ensures that health products are designed with the real needs of patients, clinicians, and caregivers in mind.

Why it’s great for health innovation:

• Ensures solutions are human-centred, addressing actual patient and clinician pain points.
• Involves prototyping and testing, which is key for medical devices and digital health tools.
• Helps navigate the balance between regulatory constraints and innovation.

3. TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) – Best for Technical and Regulatory Challenges

TRIZ is a structured problem-solving method based on patterns of invention from multiple industries. Given that health innovation often involves overcoming technical constraints, safety standards, and regulations, TRIZ helps break through these barriers.

Why it’s great for health innovation:

• Provides structured ways to solve contradictions (e.g., making a device both lightweight and durable).
• Helps teams identify solutions from other industries, which is useful when innovating medical technology.
• Can speed up the development of breakthrough innovations while staying compliant with medical standards.

4. Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) – Best for Understanding User Needs Beyond Symptoms

This method focuses on the ‘job’ that a patient or clinician is trying to accomplish rather than just their immediate pain points. Instead of designing based on surface-level needs (e.g., “patients need a pillbox to remember medication”), JTBD digs deeper (e.g., “patients want to feel in control of their health”).

Why it’s great for health innovation:

• Moves beyond traditional demographics and focuses on real-world behaviours.
• Helps create solutions that truly fit into the lives of users (e.g., wearables, digital health apps).
• Reduces the risk of designing products that fail because they don’t match how people actually behave.

5. Co-Design & Participatory Design – Best for Collaborative Innovation

Co-design involves working directly with patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders to co-create solutions. This is particularly valuable in healthcare, where products must be intuitive, safe, and effective for multiple user groups.

Why it’s great for health innovation:

• Ensures real-world usability and acceptance.
• Reduces the risk of bias by involving diverse perspectives (patients, doctors, caregivers, regulators).
• Creates solutions that are more likely to be adopted and used correctly.

Which Method Should You Use?

Each of these methods has unique strengths depending on the type of health innovation challenge you’re facing:

For the best results, combine multiple methods—for example, start with Morph Sheets to generate solutions, use JTBD to refine the problem, and apply Co-Design to test usability.

Again I would recommend: Grabbing an A3 sheet, sketch 39 solutions in a grid, and start thinking outside the box! This is the perfect starter to get your brain thinking. It really forces you to think outside the box, and its not limited to health innovation.

Here at the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre we provide a collaborative environment that supports businesses and entrepreneurs in developing innovative products and services. We house all the key player machines for Additive Manufacturing that are set to significantly grow in the health care market. We also offer access to advanced facilities, including prototyping labs and expertise in research and development. The centre has long standing links with academia and industry, facilitating knowledge exchange, and nurturing ideas from concept to commercialisation.

Learn more About The 3M BIC

At the Huddersfield Health Innovation Partnership we also emphasise collaboration among healthcare professionals, businesses, and researchers to drive innovation in health and wellbeing. We have many opportunities for networking, sharing knowledge, and accessing resources that can facilitate the development of new health technologies and solutions. The platform aims to build a strong community dedicated to enhancing healthcare delivery and improving patient outcomes through innovation.

Learn more About the Huddersfield Health Innovation Partnership.

If you're interested in sharing an idea or project aimed at advancing the health innovation sector, we would love to hear from you.