Using in-the-moment video research for Human Centred Design in Healthcare Innovation

Transcript

Transcribed by otter.ai

Eugene

Welcome, everybody, to the last session of the day. I hope you've enjoyed the speakers so far. There's been an amazing lineup. My name is Eugene Murphy. I'm the founder and CEO of digital ethnography platform Indeemo. So before I start today and just like to thank you to the MRS for putting on this event.

It's great to see digital ethnography being recognised as being worthy of a summit. And we're certainly proud to be supporting it. Now, I know digital ethnography has become quite topical since COVID, but from our perspective, we've been we've been supporting digital ethnography research since 2016. We've supported 1000s of mobile ethnography projects, digital ethnography projects, we've seen everything from farming, to, to breakfast cereals, to transport to omni channel purchase journeys, and out of the box experiences.

So obviously, based on the speakers here today, it's an incredibly diverse methodology. And it's extremely powerful at connecting people even across multiple markets at the same time. Now, clearly, the last 12 months have been a bit of a digital meteorite, and have been transformative in terms of digital ethnography for sure.

We've started to see some huge changes in terms of, of the types of research getting done using digital ethnography. Clearly, I guess omni-channel has been a huge topic of research for us. Multi market as also massively significant but without a doubt for me, the two main emerging categories of usage of digital ethnography in the last 12 months are, firstly, its use in human centred design, and secondly, its use in healthcare.

Okay, so when we were talking about speakers today, it was a pretty obvious choice for me to reach out to Richie at a leading healthcare provider. Richie has been practising human centred design for close to 25 years now. So he was a real pioneer back in the day, it's become very buzzword, you know, obviously, but in particular, more recently, he's been applying human centred design approaches in health innovation. Okay, so and, and not only is digital care an emerging category and telehealth in emerging category since COVID, it's a critical one.

So it's my pleasure to introduce you to Richie. And Richie is going to share his experiences now in the presentation of how he's using digital ethnography in human centred design and health innovation. Richie, over to you.

Richie

Great, thank you, Eugene.

Hi, I'm Richie. I'm a principal design leader within my firm in Southern California.

Before we dive into this subject, let me first give you a little bit of a reference point for my firm, if you're not familiar with us:

A friend of mine said kind of a metaphor might be the size and scale of an institution like. But my firm is a relatively large, big health provider integrated health system within the US, we serve over 12 point 4 million members. And then within Southern California, the region that I represent over 4.7 million members and members, by the way, is our language for patients. We have over 700 medical offices in over 39 hospitals, over 300,000 personnel in more than 80,000 physicians and nurses. What really makes this unique is that we're an integrated health system, and that we serve, especially in Southern California, a really wide and diverse spectrum of patients.

But what's different now is, as Eugene spoke at the beginning, is we're really going through a digital transformation. So when we look at this point in time, we're going through a digital transformation and within our category, in healthcare, we're seeing a radical shift almost overnight in virtual care adoption, and a force that's being driven by the fact the need that we want to mitigate unnecessary face to face encounters to keep people safe at home and from spreading COVID. But with that is bringing a lot of change management. For many people, their preference would be to go and meet their physician or care team in person because that sort of familiarity bias is what they're used to. Because of COVID that's how it's changed up a lot of behaviours and flip them on their head for people. And so what we need to better understand as my firm is how can we meet people where there are where they are right now in time and have insight into exactly what do they need from us? And how do we also communicate some of the different virtual care options that we have in a way that is palatable and that they understand the benefit. Now when I talk about digital transformation, I can say that within health innovation where I sit in Southern California, our portfolio is really leaning heavily into digital transformation. So we're really focused a lot on care delivery that leans into the digital virtual space. And what I will say, though, is what we're not about is perpetuating sick care. And this is one of the motivations for me joining this group. We're very purpose driven group with an innovation in that. For us, it's about improving the quality of life and care for people. It's not driven by revenue, objectives, or eyeballs. And you know, awareness and percentages is really we're looking for tangible impacts on care delivered, care, delivered, care, delivery, the quality of the experience, etc. So what I'm going to play for you right now is that the manifesto for health innovation, and it will give you a little bit of a sense of what I'm talking about, is the motivation is on the outcome of what happens when you do you are taking care of, you're able to thrive and live a healthier life. And that's what motivates us.

Richie

Yeah, every time I see that video, I get a little bit choked up. And I think it's because of the fact that it just reminds and connects me to why I do what I do is for people, it's the human piece. And that speaks to my role, my role as a principal design leader within health innovations design team. And it's kind of funny, my mom asked me, what's the day to day like for you? And it's hard to answer because, and I love this, it's a lot of variability in my job and spread across a lot of different types of projects. But I will say one through line is human piece.

So whether I'm engaging our patients, whether I'm engaging people internally, as stakeholders, or physicians that I work with, my role is really about bringing that human piece into our conversation. Our practice, I'll say too, is in health innovation, having me join the team, a few years back was also a bit of an experiment.

We've been shifting into more of a human centred design type approach within my firm, but it's still relatively new. And so my role was really about seeing if it could find a stronghold or create some kind of impact. And what I will say is, instead it has, I think human centred design is becoming extremely topical within the organisation. And there's a greater appreciation for for what it can bring forward, which is meaning to service design in the innovation that we do by having real insight into the human experience.

But I'll also say is, when I talk to my team and other designers within my firm, I explained that there our role, in a way is to be truth tellers. And a large part I kind of think of myself as, like a journalist in that sense. We're out to investigate and uncover the truth.

In the past, I've worked on different brands, where it was more about like what you wanted to hear the consumer say, and you'd almost create questions around that to try to get that verbal support. In my case, it doesn't help us only the truth does, we're talking about the quality of care delivery for people and so the truth matters.

Within human centred design, we have a lot of tools within our toolbox that we can play with, whether it's facilitating workshops, whether it's conducting surveys, interviews are using other types of research approaches to get insight. What I will say is the tool that's becoming pretty indispensable for us, essentially, at this point in time is virtual ethnography. We've been using this, this practice for going on almost three years now. And at the time, it was more out of the lens of insight and innovation, and how technology can help connect us to humans, and the human experience. And so we're leaning much more heavily into this to get those insights at home and in the living space and internally within us. So that we can design solutions that have meaning and value.

When I think about digital ethnography research, and its role within my firm, is really presenting a unique opportunity for us to get insight into what's going on in the home. Within my region, what's been in the press has been acknowledgement of the fact that we have a lot of multi generational households. And so we're in the past, you may have been treating the individual, you're now having to look at it very differently. Because something like COVID, that's easily spread and shared, especially within enclosed space, and you have a multi generation household says a two bedroom with 10 people in there. That's the kind of insight you need to better understand like, how do we protect them? How do we protect that the home environment? And how do we have insight so there's no opacity and no assumptive ness around what we think people need right now and at home? And how do we get insight into what they truly do need at this point in time.

Privacy, so I will say is just a caviar. The area that I work in is highly regulated information like pH I, PII patient health information, or patient identifying information, all those things we're extremely protective. And so one thing that is definitely become more topical is the people want to have a sense of privacy, they want to know how their data is being used or shared. And so on our side, we really lean into whether it's inviting someone into a study, over communicating for privacy, we are very transparent in how we use the information that they share with us. And all of those things go pretty far, and building some kind of sense of trust and credibility, like the title said, safe space. Well, if it's safe, people need to feel comfortable and secure in what they share.

So what else is unique about right now? Well, a lot of us are having to stay home and quarantine, you know, and that presents a unique and critical need for insight within that living space. Well, what do you always have on you, your smartphone, you know, and I like to think of, it's almost like a third appendage, you know, it's, I feel absent, when I don't have it in my hand, you know, like something's missing. So having that is important, because it's travelling with them, it helps us to have more context and insight into what's going on in the world. Another thing that's really shifted at is, historically, we ask the patient to come to us, you go and you see your doctor in person that is shifting as a result to where it is now. Instead of you come to us, we come to you.

So context is everything. And when we think about the application of digital ethnography, it plays a pivotal role in providing insight in this space and giving us a context that we need in order to empathise and better understand the situations that our members our patients are in. So let's take, for example, the home environment. And we're COVID where people are going into quarantine. Without that kind of context, say we've done a traditional path, maybe a focus group or a phone interview. What's missing is the context is dynamics, what's happening in the backdrop who else is in that household? Who else are they interacting with that influence and have an impact on not only their health and well being, but the whole home? So there's something around that as well that having more insight into collective experiences, digital ethnography can help provide that kind of context that would be missing in a normal research methodology or approach. We're also being able to do it in a way that minimises that research bias, as well. By having us removed from that environment or backdrop, and focusing more completely on them.

It’s really about them being in their comfort zone. We want the authentic self to come true, or come through. Like I said, in the past, we think of our role as truth tellers. And one of the ways that I've found that you can get to that truth is when you start to pick up on visual cues, I think of the woman in the hairnet answering your question completely unplussed. Think of the man walking around with a coffee cup and carrying on and chit chatting, answering his question, there's just something different that you can look and see when someone's talking to you in that moment that it just connects, you feel like this is a true moment, the research bias that I was speaking to earlier, they're not trying to navigate or even subconsciously control or influence like how they deliver what they're saying, based on my facial response, or what kind of desired response they may want to get from me. So that is something that we greatly appreciate is being able to get to that kind of intimate truth and knowledge, a lot of that is employing some of those principles that you know from ethnography in general is allowing them to feel and own that this is their turf, and that they're empowered. And this is their story to share. And we're just here to listen and be a vessel

You know, we're seeing it everywhere, that there's disparities when it comes to who and how you are receiving care when it comes to COVID-19. And those kinds of disparities are something that digital ethnography can play a role, it can allow us to better understand different communities that have been affected or give some insight into what their needs may be.

It's also an opportunity, I don't know if you'll have experienced this, but say you're in a focus group environment, you have that one chatting person, they can override a conversation and kind of create a groupthink type scenario. We're completely disrupting that kind of bias or influence by making it about them, and making it about a voice giving them a voice. Some people are more introverted or quiet. And this is an opportunity for them to be heard.

Insight without action isn't really helpful to anyone, not to our members, not to us. But what digital ethnography is doing. It is bringing people to human being sent back into the centre of how we think and how we make decisions. So knowing that we're a data driven organisation, and we're very evidence based that proof is really important in the proof is how these stories almost as data points of their own sync up with our data that gives you a sense of, of trends and where things going. But it opens up a big, why the context by having that context of the home and bringing that forward to our leaders that they see it in enable smarter decisions on our members behalf but also on our future as we look for ourselves, like how are we going to navigate this new changing world as we move further and further into digital type experiences. And that's physical and digital hybrid type experiences. And that convergence.

Eugene

Thank you Richie, I guess it's interesting, you talk about the hybrid and the changes going ahead. I'm curious to know probably the question of the day on everybody's lips is, is it here to say, so So what are your thoughts specifically healthcare research in terms of digital ethnography? Is this something that's going to become mainstream? I'm just curious to hear how you you see this as part of your toolkit going forward.

Richie

You know, this may be controversial, but I think it's here to stay. I, you know, like I said, about transformation versus innovation. I feel like there's no going back, you know, what was is no longer now. You know, I think this shift is is not a fad. And I think what we will be seeing, but that word hybrid that you're using, you will continue to see more digital experiences, but I think the appetite and the use of virtual care and virtual type approaches like digital ethnography, etc, are only going to increase because they're producing the kind of insights and meaning that we need to move forward.

Eugene

Excellent, amazing. Thanks, Richie. So I guess we will probably hand over to questions and answers.

Richie

Sounds good.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai