Using a disciplined process to design solutions to business and organizational challenges in the form of new products and services that when applied to operations or launched in market deliver upon business and organizational goals.
My Role As A Product and Service Designer & Developer
Since I founded my first company in 1993, a design firm that specialized in creating branding schemes and promotional packages for the motorsports industry, I’ve been refining the design process and practice that I developed. Testing, learning, and refining it until I arrived at a system of processes and practices that produced a product, service, or other solution to the problem or for the opportunity presented to my team and I.
The Wonder Guild Design Process
I actually call the process Wondrous Works Process. Sounds whimsical but the process is grounded in 20 years of research via use in the healthcare, retail, advertising, technology, and business services industries and built upon principles of the scientific method, Speculative Design, Lean Startup, and systems design.
Via this process I’ve designed, redesigned, and reimagined most of the products, services, projects, and other solutions shared in this portfolio.
There is a maternal and child health crisis in America and in California. Black women are more likely to die than any others during pregnancy or delivery, and the cause is largely racism and inequitable access and treatment within the healthcare system. Pregnancy-related mortality rates among Black women are 3X higher than White women. Pregnancy-related mortality rates among American Indian and Alaskan Native women are 2X higher than for White women Black, AIAN, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) women also have higher shares preterm births, low birthweight births, or births for which they received late or no prenatal care compared to White women. Infants born to Black, AIAN, and NHOPI people have markedly higher mortality rates than those born to White women (source: Kaiser Family Foundation).
The evidence and data are clear; real, scalable solutions are not. Even regulations meant to create health equity prohibit payers from providing a greater amount of services to those with the greatest need. And, racism–which nearly 50% of members/clients in one pilot site and 30% in another reported experiencing–is hard to eradicate.
Strategy:
To develop a solution that would be effective, compliant, and scalable, we needed to figure out how to make information and services available to the women who need it most without inadvertently promoting access among those women who can broadly, easily access healthcare and other services and whom were already having good pregnancy and birth outcomes.
We also needed a solution that would be available on demand, online, and in person. Women and expectant parents of color could not solely rely upon healthcare providers to make referrals.
Finally, we needed a solution that could be self-sustaining or low cost enough that Blue Shield could make it broadly available to our lowest income members and community members, no matter their selected health plan (initial focus was on Medi-Cal members).
Solution: Doula Benefits + Prenatal and Postnatal Services
My team and I interviewed and surveyed providers, birth equity advocates, and consumers and members to understand what members might need during and after their pregnancies. We interviewed and surveyed Black members and consumers (those with the greatest mortality risk) to understand their experiences of racism and where they felt their needs were not being met. We used these learnings to design the doula and other prenatal and postnatal services we would provide and the channels through which they would be delivered.
We partnered with community-based organizations in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego counties who were already serving women and expectant parents of color. We used their trusted networks to inform women and parents.
We partnered with women’s maternal health platform Mahmee to bring as many possible of the healthcare, wellness, and social needs services together and to make those services available anywhere, anytime.
Finally, the team and I developed multiple paths to sustainably funding the services, including Doula Medi-Cal benefits.
In addition to the Medi-Cal benefit, the maternal child health services are live in pilot or beta in several CA markets.
Kaiser Permanente (KP) is the world’s largest integrated health care organization. To the outside world, it’s one big company. To its 120,000+ employees and clinicians, it’s 21 companies with over 700 senior executives, spread across 7 regions. Each region is it’s own sovereign business unit. And, Kaiser Permanente is a health insurance company, a health care provider with exclusive physicians and nurses, a health IT organization, and so much more.
Though its leaders and employees are far flung, Kaiser Permanente’s culture is one of consensus and collaboration. Agreement and alignment are required before any new product/service, process, or model can be adopted by the enterprise. Prerequisite for agreement and alignment: Awareness.
Strategy:
We needed a way to grow awareness of key work happening within the organization in order to secure sponsors and grow adoption of new products/services. We didn’t want to add to the deluge of emails the top 700 leaders were already receiving. Nor did we want to add another new software solution that stakeholders would have to pay for and learn to use.
We designed a communications and engagement platform that provided accurate, consistent information about every product, project, and pilot happening across the organization–with a low learning curve, no license requirements, compatibility with popular systems in use, a simple and attractive interface, and a backend that facilitated communications planning and scheduling, and project team coordination.
My Role In The Solution:
I dreamed up the platform in response to 5 conditions I observed. I designed the platform–it’s initial look and feel, its interface, features and functionality. I also worked with architects to design an interconnected node-based system that would allow platform admins/owners to cross post and search other sites within the network.
I created the initial wireframes and “fat frames” and marketed the platform to Kaiser Permanente leaders throughout the organization to secure seed funding.
I developed the subscription model, and secured the funding and clients willing to pay.
And, I identified, recruited, briefed, and managed the team that is bringing the platform to life.
Results:
We’ve already got pre-orders for the platform set to launch on Janaury 21.
Kaiser Permanente is committed to preventive care for better health–for its members, customers, community, and employees. The health care provider and payer holds an annual fitness challenge for employees. This year, Kaiser Permanente wanted to grow participation and use the challenge to test new products/services.
I prototyped a mobile iOS app that allowed the health care organization’s employees to link their wearable fitness devices and share their activity data.
Strategy:
Over 40,000 employees participated in past fitness challenges but participation was waning. To attract new participants and motivate repeat participation, we needed to add something new and valuable.
At the same time, Kaiser Permanente, like most health care companies, was testing and developing mobile and digital health and wellness products.
The annual challenge, the CIO’s passion for wearable fitness devices, and an unfinished fitness app sparked an idea…
Leverage the popularity of mobile health and wellness apps and fitness devices to allow fitness device users to participate without giving up their beloved fitbits(R) and Jawbones; and
Use the annual challenge to pilot new APIs and gain insights from user activity data.
Retain a familiar experience for re-upping users
Solution:
Ultimately, we modified and completed an iOS mobile app, integrating APIs for fitbit and Jawbone devices and KP’s own APIs for sharing activity data. We brought fitbit and Jawbone activity data into the KPWalk! app so users wouldn’t need to leave to get their data fix and could “donate” their steps and miles to their teams’ efforts to amass points and win the challenge.
For users without fitbits or Jawbones, we retained the manual logging capability and allowed users to use the app’s stopwatch feature to track activity minutes, convert minutes to steps, miles, and calories, and automatically transmit data to a website where they could view individual and team stats.
My Role In The Solution:
I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…
Prototyping the mobile app flows, functions, and design
Providing experience design and creative direction for the app
Writing copy for instructions, alerts, tutorials, and collateral
Developing and executing a communications plan, including marketing collateral
KPWalks How It Works Fat Frames
KPWalks Logging Activity Fat Frames
KPWalks Fat Frame Active/Inactive States
KPWalk! app mockups
Results:
Thousands shared their activity data via the app and hundreds linked their fitness device accounts to the app to share their data. The best of what we created in KP Walks! was integrated into KP’s Every Body Walk! app, a publicly available version of the app for which we also created an Apple watch app.
WebMD offers My Health Assistant as part of Health Services
Challenge:
WebMD is a leader in health media and provider of health services to insurers and large employers. WebMD wanted to build upon the success of its Health Coach product, which provides health and wellness advice to users via telephone, and to grow its ROI on owned and licensed content.
Strategy:
The strategy was simple: Leverage underutilized content, smart but light technology, and insights from the most effective practices of telephone coaches to create a lower cost digital health coach that could be extended to thousands of additional customers.
Solution:
We evaluated the telephone coaching offering, interviewing coaches, customers, content managers, and other stakeholders to meet the most effective coaches; understand what customers found valuable about the service; learn what types of advice, communications, and coaching led to behavior changes; and identify the most often requested information.
We inventoried, evaluated, catalogued, and organized thousands of pieces of owned and licensed content.
Based on our findings, we designed an extension of the Health Coach product and WebMD’s health media offering. We organized the content such that it created “an interactive relationship between WebMD and users, one that approximates that of WebMD Health Coaches and their clients.”
We brought the thousands of pieces of content to life as a digital health assistant. We connected written, video, and graphical content and interactive tools via an intricate taxonomy and ontology, and activated it via an elegant series of triggers that created the impression that the digital health assistant was responding to users action and inaction, communications, successes, requests, and preferences.
My Role In The Solution:
I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…
Conducting the stakeholder research and identifying actionable insights
Assessing and cataloguing and all content and identifying gaps
Prototyping the digital health assistant
Developing a taxonomy, ontology, and tagging for all content
Developing the content strategy for the digital health assistant
Defining triggers to create interactions between the digital health assistant and users
Writing copy for alerts, emails, instructions, pop-ups, and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the assistant
Results:
WebMD launched the digital health assistant as “The Digital Health Assistant” and are currently selling it via insurers and large employers seeking to lower health care costs associated with smoking and conditions such as diabetes and obesity. The product has evolved a bit but it’s largely unchanged–and it’s having significant positive impact on users’ health and wellness.
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