Foreign problems can provide new opportunities for innovation. Designing solutions for global health issues requires understanding how to effectively enable change. People and organizations are more likely to adopt changes if they see the problem as serious and feel the proposed solution will help, and if key supporters endorse the change. The design process involves discovering problems, making sense of their context, ideating solutions, prototyping ideas, refining them based on feedback, and continuously evaluating and evolving to drive further improvement. Sense-making requires considering problems and solutions within complex, interconnected systems.

1. Designing for Global Health Innovation:
Foreign Lands - Familiar Problems
- New Opportunities
Cameron D. Norman PhD MDes
Cense Research + Design
Dalla Lana School of Public Health

4. Innovation: A new idea realized for benefit

5. THINKING ABOUT POSITIVE CHANGE

6. The Challenge of Change
The only people who truly welcome
change are wet babies

7. If you want to
understand
something,
try to change
it
– Kurt Lewin (1951)

8. Likelihood of Action
• A person or organization is more
likely to act if...
– View themselves (or their organizations) as
personally susceptible to a problem
– Sees the (potential or real) problem as serious
– Believes the recommended change (or innovation)
will reduce the risks associated with the problem
– Assesses the pros as outweighing the cons of
change
– Believes others endorse the change (the change is
supported by key others)

9. Likelihood of Action
A person or organization is more
likely to act if…
• Is motivated to comply with others’ wishes
• The environment is supportive of action
• Person (or organization) have the necessary
knowledge and skills to carry out change actions
• They are confident that they can carry out action
• Change is aligned with the values of the person or
organization
• Skinner, H.A. Promoting Health Through Organizational Change.
San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings Publishers, 2002

10. THINKING IN SYSTEMS

14. DesignThinking about Design

15. “Everyone designs who devises courses of action
aimed at changing existing situations into
preferred ones.”
“Engineering, medicine, business, architecture
and painting are concerned not with the
necessary but with the contingent - not with how
things are but with how they might be - in short,
with design.” - Herbert Simon

16. Problem Framing
Problem Finding
Problem Solving
Ideate
Focus
Prototype
Evaluate
Iterate
Systems Thinking
Design Thinking

18. The design & innovation process
Discovering
Sensemaking
Ideating
Prototyping
Refining
Evolving
Evaluating
Problem
Finding

20. The design & innovation process
Discovering
Sensemaking
Ideating
Prototyping
Refining
Evolving
Evaluating
Problem
Finding

21. Sense and meaning is nested within systems

22. The design & innovation process
Discovering
Sensemaking
Ideating
Prototyping
Refining
Evolving
Evaluating
Problem
Finding

23. !

29. The design & innovation process
Discovering
Sensemaking
Ideating
Prototyping
Refining
Evolving
Evaluating
Problem
Finding