Engaging Customers In The Service Design Process

Healthcare design begins and ends with patient experience. Their perspectives illuminate needs, reveal opportunities, and ground our work in what matters most. Yet there's a fundamental tension in how we engage patients in designing healthcare's future. Patient voices and experiences are absolutely fundamental to great healthcare design. Every insight they share, every struggle they describe, every moment they help us understand is invaluable. But there's a better way to honor these insights than asking patients to solve system-level challenges during vulnerable moments. When we truly listen to patients, they offer profound understanding about their journeys - the waiting, the uncertainty, the small moments of relief, the importance of clear information at the right time. These insights are gold. They reveal patterns and needs that point toward possibilities patients shouldn't have to imagine themselves. Our opportunity as designers is to take these rich insights and transform them into solutions that might not be obvious from within the current system. While patients expertly illuminate their experiences and needs, we can carry the weight of imagining radical new possibilities. Unlike other service experiences, healthcare happens at vulnerable moments. The best healthcare experience is often no healthcare experience at all. This unique context requires a different approach to innovation - one that honors patient insights while lifting the burden of solution-finding from their shoulders. What if we evolved from asking patients to envision the future to really understanding their journey? What if we took their deep insights about current experiences and transformed them into possibilities they never had to imagine? Transforming healthcare is about designing with them in a way that respects their expertise in their own experience while acknowledging our responsibility to imagine new possibilities.

Don't try and get cute It's not about the "perfect" solution or "perfect" partnership So tempting to over-engineer the solution that we want So easy to shift the focus to our own innovation So easy to forget that our "solution" is just a piece of the puzzle to the customer's actual pain points and goals So easy to loose focus the actual customer's unique needs When in doubt, just stay focused on the actual needs Partnerships Co-Innovation is a huge advantage but, we need the customer in the room during development and, we DO NOT need a formal partnership to get started Here's a better way: 1. Get some customer success stories 2. Ask questions about the other tech & services involved in that success 3. Ask more questions about a. why the problem mattered b. why the solution worked c. how everything got stitched together 4. Ask for intros to the customer's trusted people at those other vendors 5. Look at your other customers to see if you see similar needs 6. Meet and Build a plan with the other vendors on how to replicate the greater solution 7. Kickoff with an intro between your customers a. the customer with the success b. the customer with the need 8. Bring the other vendors into the conversation 9. Validate that the success can be replicated 10. Formalize the partnership Stop re-inventing the wheel Stop over-complicating it Stop making it about you! Anyone in the company with a customer relationship can get this started Are you waiting for permission? Or, are you going to make an impact? #partnerships #innovation #sales #CustomerSuccess

An exciting update to my article on Cognitive-Behavioral Design Strategies! I've added a new section on the crucial role of empathy in understanding customers' authentic behaviors and psychological drivers. Five to Thrive™ actionable insights: 1. Cultivate empathy as a skill through perspective-taking exercises and active listening. 2. Prime your empathy by creating customer journey maps that hypothesize pain points and emotions. 3. Gather insights from diverse users to counteract individual biases and assumptions. 4. Engage customers in co-creation sessions to foster collaboration and refine concepts. 5. Use behavioral science techniques to develop and sustain empathy throughout the design process. Read the full article for a comprehensive guide on leveraging empathy to create innovations deeply rooted in customer psychology! #cognitivebehavioraldesign #empathy #customerexperience #innovationmindset #designthinking Check out the Behavioral Economics Bootcamp from Irrational Labs to integrate proven methods and frameworks to increase customer engagement and behavior change through product design. Innovate & Thrive subscribers receive a special discount: Insert code "DrJack" for $50 off!