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Logitech and CERN challenged RCA students to design innovative solutions for health and safety in the wake of the pandemic. My team re-imagined the primary care office as a community-based preventative care center.
2020 RCA Grand Challenge Runner-Up
The Challenge
Eight months into the Covid-19 pandemic, Royal College of Art partners Logitech and CERN challenged students to design innovative solutions for health and safety.
My team included five design students from engineering, fashion, textiles, and service design, located across the US, UK, and Germany.
Approach
We focused on our shared interest in the relationship between food and health and safety. Poor diet was a driving factor of underlying health conditions, especially among vulnerable populations, and therefore of increased risk for severe Covid. Could a focus on food in healthcare reduce risk of severe illness in the next pandemic?
Online research
Researching healthcare trends, food insecurity, and nudge theory led us to focus further on diabetes patients as a test case in healthy living as prevention.
Patient interviews
We spoke with diabetics about their behavior after being diagnosed with pre-diabetes.
Expert interviews
We consulted a doctor and a design researcher for a national food aid nonprofit.
Insights
Unrealized aspiration for holistic care
Health experts recognized that holistic and preventative care was better for patients, but often did not see a clear path to delivering it.
Lack of options for patients’ real lives
Pre-diabetes patients knew what changes they needed to make and wanted to make them, but left doctors’ offices without a realistic path forward given other priorities in their lives.
Communities shifting
With residents moving and businesses closing because of the pandemic, urban communities were in transition with an ambiguous future.
Opportunity
We saw an opportunity to imagine new points of access for both medical care and healthy living, and to bring the two together in the process.
Health Hubs Concept
We saw an opportunity to imagine new points of access for both medical care and healthy living, and to bring the two together in the process.
Refocus primary care
Primary care would be better positioned to take a holistic approach, emphasizing healthy living, not just treating illness.
Services for real life
Health services, including meal plans, nutrition classes, and exercise classes, would be made accessible and affordable.
Community building
Spaces emptied by the pandemic would be repurposed and communities would drive the design of their services.
Service blueprint
We sketched out a pre-diabetic client’s journey through Health Hubs to map the staff, technology, and facilities needed to achieve the desired user experience.
Feedback
We introduced two diabetes patients to the Health Hubs food services, in cartoon form.
They told us what would and wouldn’t be appealing to them, and we incorporated this feedback into our service plan.
Service adoption
How would primary care offices transform into Health Hubs?
We mapped a path to engaging communities, allowing primary care offices to opt in (consistent with NHS policies), and securing transition funding from UK trusts interested in actualizing holistic care.
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