ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series Panel: Designing for the Future of Empathy in Healthcare Host: Martina Caic https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-caic/ Panelists: Anna-Sophie Oertzen https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-anna-sophie-oertzen-62714ba0/ Tomas Edman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasedman/ Josina Vink https://www.linkedin.com/in/josinavink/

1. Designing for the Future of
Empathy in Healthcare
Anna-Sophie Oertzen, Tomas Edman
and Josina Vink
ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series
PC: Experio Lab

2. Tomas Edman
Experio Lab
Anna-Sophie Oertzen
Maastricht University
Josina Vink
Oslo School of
Architecture & Design
Who we are

3. “A significant decline in empathy occurs during the third year of
medical school. It is ironic that the erosion of empathy occurs
during a time when the curriculum is shifting toward patient-care
activities; this is when empathy is most essential.”
Hojat et al. 2009
A lack of empathy in healthcare?
PC: Ali Yahya

4. “[Empathy] is based on the
principle that a designer steps
into the life of the user, wanders
around for a while and then
steps out of the life of the user
with a deeper understanding of
this user.”
Kouprie & Sleeswijk Visser, 2009
Empathy as core to design PC: Experio Lab

5. Designing for empathy
in healthcare
“We talk so nicely about patient-centered
care and the patient in focus. It’s very
popular, but now suddenly we were
supposed to see with the patient’s eyes,
how does it feel to lay there and count the
dots in the ceiling or see those lights passing
overhead by without having any power over
where I’m taken for example. And it affected
me directly in my daily work. All those things
that came, large and small. . . It affected my
work because afterwards it was often about
being able to stop for half a second and ask
myself if it was so extremely important to put
on that blood pressure cuff now or should I
let the patient breath a few minutes, show
where the toilets are, get a glass of water to
create a positive situation, and take in the
patient’s needs.”
- Nurse Involved in Experio Lab Project
PC: Experio Lab

6. The limits of empathy
“The challenge with empathy is that people tend
to focus on… themselves. People care about their
worlds—their families, their jobs, their breakfasts.
And I don’t blame them; I do too. So our empathy
becomes focused on their individual needs as
well.”
- Meill, 2015
“Popular design discourse is full of articles, books,
and conference presentations on the role of
empathy in design. In both commercial and non-
commercial settings, most designers argue the
same thing: designers should attempt to build
empathy for “users” so they can better design
for them. But empathy as it’s generally practiced
ultimately subverts its own goals. It tends to
reinforce “otherness”, promote anthropocentrism,
and ignore ecological considerations.”
- Wendt, 2015
PC: Experio Lab

7. The challenges in
healthcare
“The intention was to have one or two
patients in the journey too, but we
didn’t get them. The biggest problem
was that we didn’t have the real
patient perspective. You can always
feel and get empathy but it is not
the same if you don’t get them on
board.”
- Experio Lab project leader
“The journey was like a fake, but the
interviews were for real.”
- Participating healthcare staff
PC: Experio Lab

8. Norm-creative
design approaches
“The norm-creative approach . . .
involves a first step of being
norm-critical, i.e. challenging
social norms that contribute to
inequalities and social exclusion,
and a second step of being norm-
creative, i.e. developing design
solutions that counteract such
norms.”
- Wikberg Nilsson & Jahnke, 2019
PC: Experio Lab

9. Leveraging lived
experince
“If you don’t know it,
if you haven’t been
through it, it’s hard
to understand.”
- Innovator, Patient Innovation
PC: Patient Innovation

10. The role of social
robots healthcare
empathy
“With a better understanding
of how different functionalities
contribute to current value
creation practices, but also
how they potentially impede
the continuation of existing
value within service networks,
technology developers and
service designers have a better
chance to realize a quantum leap
in service improvements for
the benefit of service
beneficiaries.”
- Čaić et al., 2018
PC: Robohub

11. What do you think we should invest in when
designing the future of empathy in healthcare?