Philips’ award-winning design team incorporates a human-centered… Leave a comment
What do you like about being a designer at Philips Experience Design?
At Philips, a designer can grow as a human-centered ‘pi-shaped content designer’. This enables designers to be experts in both content and design. Through human-centered design we really get to understand the challenges that users face and what they need. This is complemented by in-depth knowledge of the business, clinical application, and technology. While we master the core design competences, we also have breadth in the form of multidisciplinary skills covering areas such as strategy, stakeholder management, and communication.
It allows us to combine the technology with genuine end-user insights to develop user-experience driven solutions. We don’t only work on MRI scanners, we also work in a cross-functional capacity. For example, we collaborate with teams in other areas such as CT imaging and image-guided therapy, not just in the Netherlands but with teams across the work to ensure consistency in the ‘look and feel’ of solutions across Philips’ entire portfolio. I think this global, multicultural, multidisciplinary team is one of Philips’ greatest strengths, and what I like about my job is I can make the bridges between these different competencies and cultures stronger. Philips really allows me to grow professionally.
How do you involve customers, patients, and healthcare providers in the design process?
Firstly, we go into hospitals and interview the relevant stakeholders, such as radiology department technologists, radiologists, and patients, to understand their needs. We often also follow them in their daily work to identify what they struggle with. In most cases, they actually don’t want to have a completely new system, they just want to have incremental improvements. Then we bring all those insights into our studio, frame the challenges and opportunities, ideate solutions on paper, build a prototype, and invite them to test and evaluate the concepts. Directly involving these stakeholders in the useability testing is a win-win for them and Philips and helps us build a long-term relationship with them.
How can the Philips Experience Design team support solving complex problems?
Healthcare is very complex, and it is very challenging to design a solution that suits everyone. From the technology perspective, everything also has to be forward and backward compatible, and just as importantly, sustainable. Armed with insights from the end-users we can simplify complex problems into compelling design solutions and bring them to the table for open discussion about how we move forward. It’s also important that we understand the latest trends, customer needs, and market dynamics so that we can create the right messaging around them.
