KATHERINE JONES
Hacking Health Design Workshop
This project is the result of a partnership between the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design and Venture Well. Annually, through generous funding from Venture Well, Master's of Design Students (MDes) coordinate and facilitate a one day workshop regarding a targeted health inequity. As a member of a five person cohort, I supported coordination and independently facilitated a group of seven participants in January of 2017.
Overview
Proceedings
Introduction
Know Your Context
Frame
Insights
Generate
Empathy
Explore Values
Define
Attributes
Insights
Outcome
MDes students co-planned and facilitated a day long participatory design workshop to investigate
health concerns of today’s aging population. Stakeholders from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor community, healthcare industry, and design sector convened to considered five areas including:
Aging with Vitality, Diet and Nutrition, Mobility, Social Engagement, and Remote Access to Healthcare. My seven person team took a deep dive into Remote Access to Care.
We completed a series of design-led activities in teams to investigate the five themes in an effort
to recommend attributes of possible solutions for aging populations. These recommendations will
be utilized in the following semester for an undergraduate/graduate course titled Integrated Product Development (IPD).
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Welcome &
Introductions
Know your
Context
Frame
Insights
Generate
Empathy
Explore
Values
Define
Attributes
We started the day with an overview of the geriatric population and human-centered design by domain experts from Michigan Medicine and the Stamps School of Art and Design.

A few participants engaged in an activity to develop empathy for aging populations.
Groups explored the problem space through exercises including a case study and mind mapping that helped them visualize the people, environment, and systems integral to understanding context.

Katherine Jones facilitating Mind Mapping.
Groups were guided through experience prototyping that helped them create and analyze foundational shared understandings of the problem space.

Katherine Jones facilitating Experience Prototyping.
Empathy mapping helped groups generate empathy for primary stakeholders and understand their behaviors and motivations.

Katherine Jones presenting her team's Empathy Map insights.
Groups utilized a card sorting activity to frame value statements to understand the needs of their primary stakeholders.

Participants develop value statements regarding needs for aging populations.
Groups explored the functional, emotional, and social qualities needed to generate solutions
within their theme.

Participants determine attributes for products which could address identified needs.
The Remote Access to Healthcare team developed attributes for solutions based on the categories of functional, emotional, and social. Building on the attributes, the team brainstormed initial solutions
relevant to the areas.

Presenting overall insights in proposed attributes. All five groups presenting their insights.
Upon completion of the workshop, all materials and presented outcomes were collected to be used by students the following semester in a course titled Integrated Project Development (IPD). IPD students spent the winter semester generating ideas and prototyping products for presentation at the IPD trade show through the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.