Over the last decade Leah has headed the design of wearable technology projects that include jewellery to administer insulin, cardiac monitoring jewellery, hearing aids and sensors for post-operative monitoring. In parallel she designs and facilitates healthcare co-design in complex settings, including cancer care, acquired brain injury, voluntary assisted dying and end of life care. Through this work she has developed design strategies for coalescing interdisciplinary teams; nurturing trust with end users; and increasing innovation and impact. At the centre of her practice is the use of ‘designerly’ thinking approaches to empathise with the journey of consumers in the healthcare ecosystem.
One such approach is the use of tactile co-design tools to engage with the lived experience of health seekers. The Tactile Tools, that Leah developed in 2017 and has used with over 300 participants, is a co-design method to help coalesce interdisciplinary teams and break down complex healthcare journeys into their constituent parts. The method enables groups to collaboratively prototype healthcare journeys facilitated by tactile engagement with physical tiles. The tiles have weight and substance, facilitating different modes of engagement to paper-based tools, participants slide the tiles, hold them, and build care pathways with them.
Throughout her wearable technology and co-design work a recurrent focus is on the ability of tactile artefacts to enable trust to form with consumers and interdisciplinary teams. In this talk Leah will discuss co-design approaches to support healthcare practitioners in engaging with the lived experience of consumers. She will share design-led techniques for linking higher level macro needs with person-centred experiences and will offer practical advice on increasing the creativity of our engagements with consumers. She will address the challenge of building empathy in remote co-design settings and will draw attention to the tactile in our consumer engagements to build trust with the beneficiaries of our services.