Full transcript:
Tracy: So basically, you've known Aaron for years.
Chris: Yeah, at least 12 years.
Tracy: Cool. So why did you think he would be a good guest on our show today?
Chris: I think Aaron is so just thoughtful. If you listen to Aaron's background, he's got a background in the technical academic terms of human factors. And most of us don't know. But human factors, experts design, the way things should work for people and or think about it. And I remember talking to Aaron about his first project, which was designing where all the buttons go for, for pilots and their airplanes. And so I was like, that's interesting.
Tracy: That was his first project?
Chris: It was prior to IDEO. He was doing work in that regard and confirmed that we're there. He's like, No, I did. But Aaron has great skills and goes deep in people's lives. And I thought, hey, this would be really interesting. He's translated that across food and health and has done a lot of work in health, and I think he'll tell us about that today. But I think Aaron's just a very thoughtful person when it comes to how people work. And as we go on this journey around people and their individual designs, Aaron reviews are really insightful for us.
Tracy: Alright, Aaron Sklar.
Chris: Hello, Aaron, thanks for joining Results May Vary. How are you doing?
Aaron: I'm doing great. Glad to be here. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.
Chris: It's great to have you. We are fascinated by you, as a human being you've done a lot with your life. And you're also applying design thinking to completely rethink an industry known as healthcare. And so we'd love to talk to you today about both some of your personal experiences, and then how you're helping other people design their best lives and some of their best health outcomes. So we'll just crack right in. And as you know, the podcast is about using design thinking to apply the principles of design thinking to individuals and thinking about how we can help people design their best lives. And so what do you think about this idea of applying design thinking to individuals?
Aaron: Yeah, I'm thinking about it now for the first time as it occurs to me like that all, the way that we all practice design thinking is starting with individuals. So like, what we do is we start with individuals, understand what's going on for them, and then sort of put those together and compile them, synthesize them into insights and opportunities and news solutions and then apply them and why not apply them back to individuals? Of course, that makes perfect sense. It's a cycle.
Chris: So along those threads, do you consciously or maybe even subconsciously, apply design thinking to your own life?
Aaron: Well, certainly just being in the design world for so long, I am surrounded by post-it notes. And like, that's how I think about things in my own personal life with my wife, and through making plans, like we do think things out in a similar way. But it's hard to articulate specifically like I'm doing design thinking right now. Because it's just more like I'm living my life. And like, this is just part of how I think and how I work.
Tracy: Could you give an example of some way that you and your wife who use some of the principles of design thinking to plan your lives?
Aaron: I'm just trying to think of some recent decisions that we've made, like planning out a vacation. It's not like that we like to sit down and like how to brainstorm but just have that mentality of like, now we're in the generative model of like, coming up with ideas. And as opposed to like picking an idea and filter filter filter, it's like focusing on like, what mode are we in? Are we in the expansion mode of adding to the ideas and then when are we switching to the convergent mode of picking the best idea and making it work? So we kind of like circles around that cycle. It sort of went through a few cycles of that in our recent vacation planning mode. And now we're on our way to Palm Springs in a couple of weeks with some relatives and another family.
Chris: Aaron, we were just talking a little bit before the call around, you'd move since I've seen you in a bit. And I know, I know you've lived there for a while now. But you talked about the decision of what place you were going to live in. Can you talk a little bit about how you went about that decision process?
Aaron: Sure, that might even be closer to an engineering process. But we could call it design thinking process where we live in the Bay Area and I used to go get a new job where my commute was a little bit pushing the boundaries of comfort. And so we made a spreadsheet, like actually using Google Docs of all the different neighborhoods in the Bay Area that we consider living and it was a pretty expansive spreadsheet and then rated each one on a bunch of important categories, like how accessible they are to San Francisco. How good are the schools? Are they near an earthquake fault line? Are they close to my parents, and just really waited for those different categories with different rating scales, and ended up seeing like, there was one neighborhood that surprised us like it was not even on our radar. I mean, is our radar enough to make it on the list, but like, didn't occur to us that that would be our dream neighborhood. And we actually live in Castro Valley, California. And it's just like, I met so many of the criteria that were important to us.
Chris: So it sounds like they had a lot of logic to it. Did you also fall in love with that neighborhood? Or weren't the emotional factors kind of play in?
Aaron: Yeah, well, it was more like in the design thinking process, you go through that synthesis stage, and you come through that moment of like power, here are the insights. And for us, the answer was like, oh, Castro Valley meets our needs. And we just like, jumped into action. And like, start spending time here. I started talking to people that lived here, new people who lived here, got to know the different parts of the neighborhood's different schools here. And just yeah, and like, jumped in and started talking to a real estate agent here.
Chris: Yeah, two things that are coming to mind, as you're explaining this, to us. Just awesome if you kind of laughed and said, but it's not like we sat down and had a brainstorm as you were deciding on your vacation. And the other theme we talk a lot about at Results May Vary is the idea of just low barrier experimentation. And we tend to as individuals, act in a very much an all or nothing way. It's like, if I'm going to try to lose weight, I'm all in or I'm all out, I don't really kind of dabble in it, I just go all in or out. And so I'm curious, why do you think it seems logical to me that you'd want to brainstorm about big decisions in your life that people would really get a lot out of that? Why do you think people don't do that?
Aaron: I honestly don't think it occurs to people I'm even working on a project at work with the way our organization's health agenda is broken up, we have a portfolio of multiple different companies. And I'm working with one of the companies that I haven't worked with before. And they have an in-house designer, and they've contracted with another designer. And I just noticed, it struck me, these two designers came up with a solution on the first day, and just have stuck with it. And I think that's how most people operate. Just like that's the default human way of being if like, you have a problem, you come up with a solution and you act on it. And I think that the designer mindset encouraged us all, to spend a little bit more time in that idea stage. And with intention of like, discovering the best idea and the ultimate idea of not just what's the first idea or the first idea that works, let's just do it. I think that's maybe just human nature, and it takes something to stop and look around and really dig deep and explore.
Chris: Yeah, great point. You've always taken on interesting side projects. And I've always admired your ability to get those things done. The most recent one being Prescribe Design, can you talk a little bit about the role of side projects in your life outside of your full-time job and a little bit about why you pursue them and perhaps take us down the road of how prescribed design happened?
Aaron: Yes, I mean, for me, I prescribed design, it is a side project and not like, I have a full-time job. And this is something I'm doing on the side, but for me, it's I would call it more of an umbrella project like this is what I'm doing for my career. And what I see missing in the world of this sort of career is being a designer in healthcare. This is something that I see is missing. And so I see like there's an opportunity to put it in. And what prescribed design is, is it's building up a network of people who care about reinventing healthcare and coming up with great solutions for the healthcare challenges that we all face, both as individuals and as a society. And that we see that design is a key element to contribute to those solutions. So the community of people are designers, but actually, a bigger component of the community are physicians and other clinicians who really care about making a difference. And they're starting to see design as a tool. And your question is more about how does the role of the side project fits in. And for me, it ties everything together in terms of my personal passion, my commitment to expanding the field as a whole, my commitment to being a contribution outside of my specific job. And when I started to think about this, and started to work on it, and started to have these conversations, it's just, it's such a huge opportunity that it just naturally calls me into action, I just, you know, jumped in, and like, there are so many actions to take, and you just take them and so many people to meet and everyone I talked to is, you know, joined in the conversation and really added to it and it's become really a group effort, and it's very rewarding. And it's something that's rewarding outside of my role at Healthagen But at the same time as contributing to my current job and contributing to the whole future of my career overall.
Tracy: I mean, it's lovely to hear you talk about your commitment and kind of seeing yourself as a part of a larger vision. I'm wondering, what are some of the first steps that you had to take to be called into action as you were talking about that?
Aaron: The first step is like knowing that there's a gap. And when I left IDEO and joined Healthagen, I was the only designer and I can't make up my own job description, like, here's what a designer is going to do, and this healthcare organization, and what was amazing, I didn't know what to expect. And what was amazing is this, the reception was so positive, just, you know, the reception of me, the reception of the team that I hired, the appreciation and acknowledgment of all the work that we did. in health care, there's just such a gap between them, you know, the hated words, MVP, which is the minimal product that that most health care companies go for, and what's possible, and through the design processes and design output that our team created, like, we just like lit up different teams across the organization. And I saw what was possible. And I saw like, not only was it possible, but just the reception was so positive that it just like had to happen. And like just elevating that conversation. More and more that conversation happened about design in healthcare, the bigger the impact could be, and the wider it would spread. So I started off just talking to other people who are working in the same field and other designers, other healthcare practitioners who actually get design and care about design. And I just started talking, what do they think is missing? And I talked to, like, the whole range of people, people who are very established in their careers, people who are really just starting off, people who are working on their own trying to do something and others who are part of larger organizations. I was just looking for, like, what's the gap? What's missing that we could put in? That would have these conversations getting louder and louder and louder?
Chris: Aaron, for those listening to that, may not have any experience in healthcare at all, could you give us a kind of tactical concrete example of how you saw design help people with their health?
Aaron: I'll start to take a step back from there, even as the part of healthcare that I'm in is responding to the shift in America towards Accountable Care, and the whole Obamacare world is incentivizing this shift to this new way of working for, basically, for hospitals and physicians and clinicians to be accountable. And what that means is that it's a shift in mindset. And it's a shift in the need for the tools that you use. So for example, right now, in the current model of health care, doctors treat whoever happens to make an appointment and show up and sit down in their office like that's who they treat. And in the accountable care model, the doctor’s practice and the hospital system has to start to take accountability for a whole population of patients, whether they show up or not. And what's happening in the industry that's responding to that is a shift and adding new technology tools that allow doctors to like to look at their caseload and say, oh, here are these sets of patients that we're not reaching and who are not calling in and making appointments or who are not taking their medication. It's more like finding the gaps and then going after them proactively. So there's a bunch of new demand for new tools and technology that's being brought into the healthcare system. And there's a full slide and there's a whole category of the world called health IT and all the digital health records, everything is going digital now. And for the most part, like it's an amazing revolution in terms of what's technically possible. But across the board, pretty much every single product I've ever seen being introduced into this context is that their minimum MVP, like from a design perspective, like embarrassing to look at, from a usability perspective, as horrific user experience for the disrupting the doctor's day, making it inaccessible, you know, the intention is to be accessible to patients and a lot of ways it's not. So all the designers are making a difference in this part of health care is making these tools useful and usable and desirable, and just like really fit into the context. So number one, to your answers, like making the system work so that patients can access services and patients are being served. So that's like number one at a systemic level. And then to answer your question like direct impact, I'm trying to think of an example that like, one of the things that we're learning is when you start to put all this technology in place, and all these systems in place and starting to be accountable, there's a new role that's emerging as the linchpin of the whole system. And that's someone called the case manager. And those are people who are usually highly, highly trained nurses who spent their whole career in nursing. And now I actually have a desk job. And their desk job is like working through the computer system to figure out who are the patients are falling through the gaps and going after them, and did a project last year really creating a really well-designed, workable tool for these case managers. And it's got to spend time with them and really learn about like, what their life is like, and how they engage and these amazing, amazing stories of these are really dedicated people who just really want to make a difference. And their job is like tracking down people and finding out what those individual people need. And a lot of times it's as simple. And here's a kind of a dramatic example. One of the case managers told us a story of they had this one patient that they recognized that pattern would show up in the emergency room every few months, I can't remember what their health condition was, but like run out of their medication, stop taking medication. And I had an onset of their condition and got rushed to the ER, and the case manager sort of dug into the situation and learned about them. And what they found out is like this patient had the doctor that they were assigned to was like a way across, they'd moved and said the doctor was really far away from their home. And so they didn't go and did it. And then when they didn't go, they didn't get the prescription refills and they didn't get their prescription refills, they ended up in the ER and that was a guaranteed way to get new prescriptions. Get the drug back if you go to the ER and they will prescribe it for you. So the case manager figured out Oh, here's what's going on. Let's see. So she got the patient, a doctor that was in their own neighborhood, and sent them a taxi for every appointment. And that's actually like a small like some individual case manager made that choice. And that's caught on really, there's actually a huge shift now where a lot of these larger health organizations now have a taxi fund where they send taxis to make sure that people get to their appointments. And that's a shift like when the doctors start to take on being accountable. That's a really direct impact on a patient.
Tracy: That's pretty amazing. I mean, it's certainly more cost-effective to do that.
Aaron: Exactly, like there's the first time that someone had to do it. I'm sure there was a lot of explanation. And then finally, if you're actually this is a lot cheaper than sending the person to the ER.
Tracy: To some people I would imagine they would say, Well, if somebody isn't responsible enough to get themselves to their doctor's appointment, why should it be the fault or the responsibility of the healthcare industry to do that for them?
Aaron: Yeah, that's a political question. What's the case now in our society is we kind of all pretend that we're not responsible for each other. And the reality is, we're all paying for that person's, ER visit, the ambulance if they're not insured, or if they're insured by Medicare, Medicaid like that's coming out of all of our pockets. And the way that our system is set up right now is no one's really being accountable. And so the costs are there. And what we're shifting now is like, let's put someone in charge of these costs. And so why not the doctors and the health systems and the hospitals. And so that's what shifting and when you put someone could be anyone in the system being accountable, they're going to come up with creative ideas like these taxis. But that's what we're playing with now in our society, we're switching to like, well, that's what happens when the health system is accountable. And what we're starting to see is a lot less waste and a lot more creativity and things like this taxi example.
Tracy: I totally agree with him imagining other people thinking about like, I'm not paying for your taxi.
Chris: Hey Aaron, just Let's step back for a minute. We skipped right over the intro. But I think it's really interesting how you arrived, I think it's worth hearing that you didn't come to this with a deep health background. And so it'd be really interesting to hear the kinds of things you've worked on in your past and how you ended up in health.
Aaron: Yes, so health has always been sort of in the background. It's something that I am committed to even at the early stages of my career and coming into design. And I came in from the aspect of human-centered design and human factors, and really learning about people and understanding how the brain works and memory and attention and perception, and then starting to apply that knowledge to the shape of how do we create tools and products and services that actually fit with the way people think and what people expect. And it's a super interesting field and design as a whole, there's so much you can do with it. And my intention from the outset was to use that power for good. And like you can do all that learning about people and what people care about and like come up with really awesome ways for people to put money in slot machines, or smoke more cigarettes. And so I have always just had the mindset of like, the kind of work that I want to be doing, the kind of projects I want to be working on, is using the skills that we all trained in to make a difference and to actually contribute to people's lives. And health is just such an obvious straightforward thing, we all have to deal with our personal health, our family members’ health, and it's just so real, to make an impact on that. It's really gratifying. So when I spent the bulk of my career at IDEO, as a design consultancy, there's lots and lots of different projects. And over the time there I always had health as for, again, the umbrella theme, and always ever had a health and wellness had every year I would say two or three really amazing projects that were right in the sweet spot to the really great project designing a new bike for Shimano, for people who don't bike, create project doing DNA sequencing and building it using the workflow for DNA sequencing machine, which was amazing. We had a great project with the CDC, like Chris, you and I worked on together about how to get kids to eat healthily, how to get kids to eat vegetables. So every year, there are so many opportunities, and that sort of has always fed into now in the last three years, I've been focused 100% on health care, and like 100% on this like the literal health care world, that's about understanding the system, understanding the tools that make the system work. And it's really been a thrill.
Chris: A lot of people listening to our podcasts think yeah, that's interesting. I just don't have time to apply design thinking to my life and a couple of critics say things like that. These are single people that have done well. And now they've got time to really think about themselves. And that's absolutely not the case for you. You know, you've got kids and a family and a commute and everything else. So can you share a little bit of, for lack of a better way of saying it, how you manage your time? And how do you carve in all these things that you're doing?
Aaron: That's a good question. Because I think that's at any stage of life. That's always the question, how do you fit in everything that you want to accomplish? And I don't have any secret answer to it. And any secret tricks that for me, it's really about being clear about my priorities. Like for me, my number one priority is my family and being a husband and being a father of three sons. And it's really important to me every morning like I'm the guy that makes breakfast for everybody. And then every evening, we're all together for dinner. And so like that's like, those are some anchor points. And I've had it you know, fit in my full-time job and fit in my other passions and my friendships and activities. And I think the secret actually, is teams and teamwork. I'm actually in a leadership program, in addition to all them also a year-long leadership program. And the whole training of the program is how to create teams and teamwork and to cause everything that you want to cause. So like in prescribed design, it's not me doing it, it's me bringing people together and forming teams and causing other people to step up to be team leaders. And really, we've accomplished a lot and just, it's really been like two or three months. The same thing. Obviously work is all teamwork and even with family-like creating teams around my family, with my parents helping out with babysitters, and bringing more people that cancel each of those conversations. When you're a solo artist, it's really hard to imagine fitting everything in. But really the training that I'm getting is like the more teams and teamwork you have, the more you can accomplish.
Tracy: That's fantastic. I feel like I've been struggling with that myself since leaving my job and going freelance and taking on all these initiatives and I'm totally a solo artist. So thank you for helping me see that I need to invite more people in.
Aaron: And one thing that I'm taking away from this conversation is like, I haven't thought to myself, literally, oh, I'm doing design thinking now and this is a design thinking activity. But just I'm realizing that just being so immersed in the design world, and the way that we all work, just makes me naturally have those types of processes in my own life. And it just occurs to me like working as a team is a big part of being a designer, it's really there's a limit to what you can accomplish as a single designer and working with other people with different skills, you can accomplish so much more.
Chris: Absolutely. Aaron, are there things you're doing in your life right now, where you're absolutely not an expert. So where you're taking on something, you know, kind of brand new, whether it's a hobby or anything in your life, where you're you consider yourself an early stage beginner?
Aaron: Randomly, which popped into my mind is, this is a really random thing to say. But breathing is something that I knew. I went to the Quantified Self Conference in San Francisco last month, and just happened to like being standing near this booth, you know, the whole conference all about these wearable things, tracking your steps, and your heartbeat and all that. And I was like, I never wanted to track any of that stuff. But then there's one product called Spire and I talked to the founder, Neema, who was just talking about being conscious of breathing. And then what this product does is it tracks your breathing, your breath, and gives you feedback all throughout the day like you're tense, or you're holding your breath, or you're really calm. And I didn't buy the device that day like that. The whole rest of that day that I after I talked to him, I was conscious, like, Oh my gosh, I'm holding my breath. And so the next day, I bought it, and I've been wearing it on and off and just been very newly conscious of how I breathe, and how that makes a difference in my day and my conversations and definitely by no means a master of it. But I'm really intrigued and interested, like what's going to come from that?
Chris: Yeah, did you build on your experience there? I've noticed so many of those, not necessarily just picking out that quantified self conference, but a lot of it's very serious and can come across as pretty self-absorbed. And by train, we should all do this together. Let's create a laugh tracker, you know, look back at the end of the day and say, Wow, I hardly laughed at all today. This is ridiculous.
Tracy: I think that's a fantastic idea. I was at an improv workshop yesterday, and I was laughing so hard. My cheeks hurt. And then it just struck me I haven't laughed that hard in such a long time.
Chris: That's great. Yeah, we're definitely taking ourselves too seriously. And yeah, it seems a lot of laughter could go a long way.
Aaron: That's awesome. That's so much better than we thought you were gonna say. Thank you know, when you said the last chapter, I like to imagine a button that you push that would like to have laughter. Ah, like the laugh track?
Tracy: Yeah. Laugh tracker.
Aaron: You walk around and like to create laughter after you say.
Tracy: That is also an interesting idea.
Aaron: I like your idea better, Chris.
Chris: Thank you.
Tracy: Aaron, what are some ways that you see that people could better design their lives for health in the work that you've been doing? I'm imagining that you're seeing a lot of people's stories.
Aaron: Yeah. So think about it, like a lot of the people that I've met, who are, you know, again, because I'm in the healthcare world, I'm more thinking about it from people who like to have an ongoing condition. And like, sort of the patterns that I've seen that really make a difference for people like that.
Tracy: Yeah, I think that would be helpful.
Aaron: Like one of the things that really struck me and I think probably all of the conversations I've had with people who have said that there's a lot of people have ongoing conditions. And there's a lot of people who have ongoing conditions that they can't quite figure out what they are. And those are the most frustrating, because our health system is really expert at like if you fit all these boxes, and we can recognize we can diagnose you, then we like to do the math. And here's your solution. Here's your medication, here's your operation done. And if there's someone who doesn't fit those boxes, our health system doesn't know what to do. And it's super frustrating. And I've met enough people to like see that that's a really big pattern. And what I've seen all of those people strive to create is a relationship with a health care provider, and whether that's like their primary care physician and like I met a guy who just likes loves, this is an older gentleman. He's in his 70s. He loves his doctor at Kaiser. I mean, this is a direct quote from him that, my doctor is like, the most important person in my life. And like he said that right in front of his wife. That's really, that just shows like that's a really powerful relationship. And then I've met lots of people who sort of have either rejected the traditional primary care doctor relationship or for whatever reason and met this one woman who's like gone on a rampage with alternative healers and she called herself alternative healing junkie and like all that acupuncturists and massage therapist and she had a lot of really different interesting things by feedback, I can't remember what else. And she just said, when we were talking, she realized, like, wow, I'm just doing all of that chasing all of these people in order to have the experience of being cared for. Because the way that the relationship she had with her primary doctors weren't doing it. So she's really seeking that out. So like finding that relationship, whatever that is, that could be your doctor, it could be your massage therapist could be your physical trainer, it could be your neighbor, just someone like that you really like in the exploration with because I think what is occurring to me like that, the way that how for all of us is I mean, it really is a lifelong journey. And it's not just this something that happens during those 20 minutes, once a year where you see your doctor, and really being able to fill in that whole year, like whether that's tools like a Fitbit, or you know, the breathing or the laugh tracking, what are the tools that you want to bring into your life? And what are the people that you want to bring what is the team that you want to create around yourself as your character, your personal care team, your family, your doctor, your alternative healers, this one guy, actually the same guy who's the older guy who loves his doctor, he gets input from everyone. One funny story that stood out for me is like he gets advice from he calls them the kids at Whole Foods. Like he's like the kids of Whole Foods turned me on to turmeric and like, he just adds that spice to like all of his foods now, just that someone suggested that to him. And he said he learned that that was like a healthy thing for him. And like people are just getting input from so many different places now and building up their own care team who would say that's what's the theme that I would underline from this conversation is build your own personal care team, whatever that looks like.
Chris: Aaron, I have to share, since people may not know but I also worked in healthcare and a couple of funny stories where I was talking to a guy about preventative health and he said it is ridiculous. My Volkswagen dealer does a much better job. And all they do is they send me a message in the fall. It says it's gonna rain soon, you should change your wiper blades. And he said it's ridiculous that why can't the health care system be proactive with me, and his second quote was about labs and getting blood results. And he said, you know, it's funny in the rest of the world, nobody wants to be average or normal. But in healthcare that's celebrated, congratulations, your average or you're in range or normal. So is this really interesting to see how people what's seen as really positive from the inside from the industry are just falling? well short of inspiring or engaging or empowering for real people.
Tracy: And that makes me think about the fact that I mean, in health care, traditionally, you're looking at other health care providers and how they're doing things. But the analogy to the car dealership, it's like, you need to look outside of the healthcare industry, to see how people are dealing with different things. They're engaging in different things every day, in different industries, and they have that same level of expectation for healthcare.
Aaron: Yeah, it's a brand new conversation in the healthcare world about actually being customer-focused, patient-focused, that's just not the default way for the last hundreds and hundreds of years that doctors have worked. It's always been that the doctor is the guru, the expert, and you just come in, the doctor is also very important and busy. And you have to like to work around the doctor's schedule. And whatever wisdom you can get from the doctor, you just hang on their every word, that's sort of the model that's been healthcare for the last several hundred years. And what's shifting and this is also related to Accountable Care is now that organizations are accountable, they're actually really committed that you stay as part of their network and that you're part of their caseload of patients that if you leave and start going to a new doctor, that like they literally lose a ton of money, and they're more conscious of it. And so it's a whole new conversation. And that's what design can bring in exactly what you're pointing out. Tracy is learning from other industries and learning about best practices and engaging people and building loyalty and branding, and building products and services that really work and really work for all of the different people involved. Both the patients and the doctors, and the system and the family members that there's this really new conversation and there's so much that designers bring that just that bring naturally that just like automatically make a huge difference very, very quickly.
Tracy: What are your dreams for prescribed design? What do you hope to see it become in the future?
Aaron: That's a great question. I've been just making it up as I go and it's already like exactly what I wanted it to be. What I said I wanted was a really vibrant group of people who know each other and care about these issues together and we just have a platform for taking our very individual conversations and bringing them together and Making them loud. And I've just really loved what we've accomplished so far like there are so many people now who now know each other and are really bringing those conversations together over time, just like it's just been louder and louder and louder. I don't know what that looks like, we have the website prescribeddesign.com. We've got a LinkedIn group called Prescribed Design. And both of those are super active in terms of people visiting the site in terms of people commenting on the LinkedIn group. And it's really just a great way for people to connect and support each other in their projects and their careers. And I'm trying to think what else I would want to say going forward, but it's just I would say louder.
Tracy: And I know like this is a role to Prescribe Design is a way to bring designers into the conversation. Is there any role that just lay people can be involved in? Or if they have an interest in it?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, the whole we just published an article on the website this past week, that's all about like, Am I included in this conversation? And if you're wondering if you're included, the answer is yes. Because just the fact that you're wondering means that you're interested in, you're in the conversation, there's sort of three main groups of people who are part of the conversation, part of the community. So obviously it's designers who are interested in healthcare, working in health care or want to be working in health care, a second group, we're calling them healthcare natives. So people, doctors, nurses, other medical staff, health care administrators who see that they want to make a change, and see design as a potential tool that's going to make that difference. And they want to learn more about design. And then the third category is we're technology specialists, and providers, vendors who are serving the healthcare industry and want to provide, again, tools and services that are going to fit that context. And there's sort of a whole continuum along with all three of those groups. And those are the people we want to be talking to, and there are people who want to be talking to each other. And that's what prescribed design is all about.
Tracy: Fantastic.
Chris: Aaron, it's been an honor talking to you. That's so exciting to hear what you're up to, and you're an inspiration to us. And I know you'll be inspiring a lot of people that listen to this episode. So appreciate your time today.
Aaron: Great, thank you. I love this great conversation,
Chris: Any kind of parting thoughts for people that might be new to design thinking, considering it for themselves, or even potentially as patients and sick sessions you might have for navigating the system as a patient?
Aaron: Well, my big takeaway, I'll say it again, in a different way to answer that question is like design thinking is, is sort of just a way of approaching the world. And I would encourage everyone who is new to it, or sort of learning about is like, the pitfall that a lot of people come to is like, let's do a design thinking activity for this hour or this day, or this workshop. And then they're done. And what I'm taking away from this conversation, and I would encourage everyone to start thinking about is like design thinking is all day every day. And it's just a way of looking at the world. That's gonna play out in all of your work and all of your conversations, your family. And it's something that it's not a discrete action. It's just an approach that if you start to really immerse yourself in the tools, and again, the main tools that I would underline are empathy, like really caring about what matters to people around you. That's number one. And then number two is prototyping and iterating. And like, if you just do those two things throughout your life, like you're doing design thinking, and you'll see the impact.
Chris: Thanks, Aaron. Amazing.
Thanks for coming on the show, Aaron. I think the takeaways for me was one, I was pleasantly surprised that Aaron did not think that individuals designing for themselves were a bad idea.
Tracy: That was a surprise?
Chris: No, I thought that he surprised me that he thought it was as exciting as we thought it was.
Tracy: Oh, good.
Chris: Yeah, I was afraid that he might not. He talked about the design process. And we talk theoretically about the design process often. But he talks about it starts with an individual and usually a design project that goes to scale up for some big thing or product, and how cool it is to close the loop. So we're talking to individuals, and then actually have the individuals do the things that are for the individual.
Tracy: Yeah, I was surprised that he said that he hadn't thought of it before. Like that he wasn't going to apply it to himself, although he does. But it's just not conscious.
Chris: Yeah. And you know, it's it's funny, you talk about it that way because we talked about his vacation and we talked about how they used a very loose sort of design framework to think about their vacation, but they weren't specifically going through the process. And he said something like it's not like we brainstormed what vacation wouldn't be in it. And then later you asked, why don't you think people brainstorm and he said something actually really sit down it's really simply said, I just don't think they think too. And to me, it just rationalizes everything we're doing. Yeah, around like, Yeah, I don't think we do think that about, let's hold a brainstorm about my next career path or what I'm gonna do this summer or how our relationship should work. I don't think we get that creative.
Tracy: I think we ruminate about it. Like internally. But we don't hold space to expand and that's been coming up a lot in the work that I've been doing too and like presentations, I've been giving and trying to figure out how do you just introduce the concept to people that when you have a problem, you don't just jump to a solution? You take some time but everybody's so motivated to get it solved? I think that they're just like, well, you came up with an idea. Sounds good enough. Let's go. And on the one hand, we do talk about like, you know, just get started, do something. Take a step. But it's like, don't, don't take the step, assuming that you've solved the problem. It's just an experiment to try before you come up with what the ultimate solution might be. Take a while.
Chris: Yeah, I agree with that. And it also makes me think it came up in a conversation, I think we think a lot about problem-solving, right? And even as individuals, you're you have a problem that crosses your path, you know, here's a situation that I need a fix for. And the same thing happens with any problem in the world is you do want a solution fast because you have a problem. So the idea that you would actually proactively get ahead of those problems and think about like, oh, here's an opportunity for me, that I so many of us, I think have a lot of things on our shelves around things we'll get to or when I eventually get the time for and I think everyone would nod their heads right now saying, rarely do you actually get to those things. And unless they become a problem, and that now you're forced to say, now I have a problem, I've lost my job, or we need to move to another state or I believe I've got or I've got a disease now, these are those are problems and I think we're advocating that you can use design for those problems. And Aaron advocates taking some things off the shelf that you want to pursue and proactively get after.
Tracy: Yeah, I'm really curious about the way to visit you tonight. I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast about how to become great at something like what are the steps that you would take and it was all around deliberate practice. And I just had a question about, like, what drives us fundamentally, to want to challenge ourselves? Why would you want to learn to play the guitar? Why would you want to pursue these things that are on your shelf? Why are they on your shelf to begin with? And you know, that it's gonna be a challenge but yet you still are attracted to that.
Chris: Right? I tried to picture the kind of anyone I've ever met that just wouldn't have anything on the shelf like, it's all good, not trying to change anything, not trying to solve any problems, not try and grow, I'm good. right here enjoying life. I'm kidding. But yeah, your underlying points? So where's all the gumption? The drive coming from? Does the compassionate achiever outdo the one that is like the beat themselves up achiever?
Tracy: So I'm taking that compassion class right now. And, yeah, it's really interesting, because it's surfacing, how harsh I am on myself, and how much I strive for things. And then I get overwhelmed with all of that striving. And then I kind of don't do anything. And then I get bored. And then I cycle back and then extract. So yeah, just being conscious of it. And then trying to apply the compassion obviously shows to other people trying to apply that to me. That's really fascinating.
Chris: And it's once you get those things out of an individual and into a group setting like I always think about really famous teams like the Beatles, right? The Beatles are like, the song sucks. It's horrible. Like every show they play, they're like, what could have been so much better? Like it just sounds like you could just hear it, taking away their momentum? And if you do that in a public forum, you guys like wow, that's really not productive, to be that hard, yet, do they hold a high bar in the sounds? Absolutely and I don't know that much about Beatles’ history but I think it's, it seems to be a fine line between holding yourself to an achievement goal, but not holding it so high that you're just drowning your energy, for sure. And I think that's a fine line to walk.
Tracy: Well, on the flip side to when things are so easy. You don't feel challenged. I'm working on a project right now potentially around learning to play guitar. And they're trying to find ways to teach people to do it more easily. And they're trying some things which made it so easy that then people just dismiss it. So you have to find that right level of challenge or different people at different stages in their lives.
Chris: You really unpacked healthcare nicely, I'm trying to pull out.
Tracy: Well, there was a lot of interesting conversation I felt around the quantified self. With the Spire, I wondered how if he's still using it because I feel like those things, you know, it's kind of come and goes, Yeah, but how do you create that excitement that you want to keep with it?
Chris: And that's what I like a lot about the way that Aaron sees the world is, there are certainly the practical factors, you know, sort of the data and the things that you get back. But as any great human factors person knows, but especially in my experience with air, and is that we do these emotional things that are just highly irrational are completely unpredictable. And I think all the math and information about quantified self or the way a Fitbit works, or it makes perfect sense, right? But then the emotional side is what actually drives the behavior. So how do you create that kind of feedback that's exciting, emotionally exciting, and emotionally interesting? And allows for the failures and makes it playful and fun, human?
Tracy: And then that makes me think about Kyra Bobinet talking about how designs have expiration dates. And so how do you keep those things kind of going long term? How do you make a breathing product interesting a year from now? Or maybe it's not meant to be used for that long? Maybe it's meant to change your behavior and then carry on without it like training wheels? But I didn't really love your laugh tracking idea. Yeah, I think that's highly undervalued.
Chris: I think it is, I think, Well, to me, I think it's just a proxy for an emotional tracking device. Like, what are the things that best reflect your emotion? How many times I ask a guy like how many times he's cried in the last year, but it's pretty humorous. Like anyone in the world would know that a good cry is pretty amazing. So yeah, could we count that on an annual basis? Or we were talking in healthcare recently about the ethical line of big data and predictive analytics. And, you know, we're pretty close right now to just knowing if two cell phones are by each other, you know, that somebody is not alone. So I could say you could see things like, how did we send an elderly person home after surgery, and we realize they've been alone for five days straight? This is the thing of the future. It's not happening right now. But you could get that and that that'd be really interesting. It is. I'd like to know, information that I can get for myself, that'd be really helpful for me, like, yeah, hey, last month, you were around a lot more people than you were the month before, and you seem to be happier, or you're freaking out. Because you're an introvert, like, you need to retreat. That is too many people for you. So that would be helpful. So I think I think the promise of getting insights that we don't know to look forward to not look for like that passive teeing up of like, crazy. Did you know that when you're around more people, you spend less money? Or, you know, it's just like, no way, I didn't know that.
Tracy: It's interesting. That just made me think of like, you know, people go to psychics to envision the future and to get a sense of like, Who am I? Right? Like, I can't, I can't know. myself. So I need you, which has no scientific basis. Right. But it feels good. And then when you're talking about, you know, who would have this information, we make these insights, then it feels creepy, like Big Brother, the health care system, like I don't want them to know these things. which is unfortunate, because the information is valuable. And people would probably want it. Who do you trust?
Chris: Trust that information and it'd be really interesting to just have that information. It's kind of like you wish you just had it for yourself? It wasn't being used to sell after no external.
Tracy: No external party involved.
Chris: Yeah, just for you by you. That'd be really interesting.
Tracy: All right. Well, thanks to Aaron for enlightening us about the healthcare system and design. Alright, that's a wrap. Thanks so much for listening. Our dream is to build a community of people who can create and take advantage of any opportunity that interests them, to do this really well. We'd love for you to participate, try out and share back your own life design experiments. Or if you've already got a great story of how you've designed your life, we'd love to hear from you on our Facebook page, or on resultsmayvarypodcast.com. Our website is also where you'll find show notes and links to all the things we mentioned in the episode. And if you wouldn't be so kind, subscribe to the show, and share your favorite episodes with friends. that'll let even more people start designing their own lives. A big thanks to the folks who helped us make the show possible. composer and filmmaker HP Mendoza for the Results May Vary theme music, graphic designer Annessa Braymer for our logo, David Glazier for sound mixing and team podcasts for editing, and of course, thank you so much for listening to Results May Vary.