Handwashing in hospitals is a major issue. This presentation looks at a design thinking approach we undertook to address some of these issues. Unfortunately the talk doesn't translate well as a flat presentation, if you're interested in talking about this topic more please feel free to contact me. It was presented at UX Australia in 2014.

1. Hello
Hi my name’s Tim.

2. Thanks
Thanks for having me here today and thanks for Donna
and the team for putting on such and amazing event.

3. As UX / CX / ED people
we love to geek out
about stuff
Personas, journeys etc… I love talking about this stuff
too but today I wanted to take a step back.

4. Why do we do,
what we do?
For me I want to craft better experiences for everyone,
so we can live long, happy healthy lives.

5. Australia has an amazing health care system, but as an
experience design professional I can’t help but notice
the gaps.

6. “The problems that exist in
the world today cannot be
solved by the level of
thinking that created them.”
- Albert Einstein

7. Hospital
Staff
The health care system in Australia has symptoms of a
closed system, where change is difficult to achieve.

8. Lending a hand
I’ve been passionate about this space for a long time,
so following my passion I reached out and lent a hand.

9. Together with Don
Campbel.
A partnership with Don Campbell the Director of General
Medicine, was formed and we started to talk about how
we might work together.

10. So together with health care professionals we looked at
some of the problems they face on a daily basis.

11. One problem stood out, hand hygiene. Simple how can
we get medical professionals to wash their hands and
reduce instances of infection in the hospital environment.

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What seems like a small problem turned out to be huge,
its estimated 200,000 people acquire infections in
Australian hospitals every year and 7,000 die as a result.

13. The journey
This is where we started our journey, with partners a
problem and a goal. Here are some of the insights we
garnered from our investigation.

14. We embedded ourselves at Monash, spending time in
the trenches trying to understand the actors,
environment and the systems in place.

15. We learnt about what the rules were. We found a
disconnect in the learning styles of the staff and the way
the information was being taught.

16. We struggled with access to staff, learning that they
didn’t like being observed by people from outside of the
industry.

17. We were amazed at how good these people are at their
job, and the quality of care they provide.

18. While the rules are good on paper they break in
unexpected ways.

19. The systems extends beyond the doctors and nurses
to PCAs, builders, computer techs, physios etc…

20. Hospitals are littered with hardware that goes unused.
When designing in this space we didn’t want to add to
the clutter.

21. Hand washing reminders are everywhere. Which leads
to instances of blindness to the visual triggers to wash,
but the access couldn’t be better.

22. We looked at others playing in this space and found
that while there were a lot of good solutions, no one
solution had managed to solved the problem.

23. A bump on the road
During all this research we hit a couple of major snags.

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Several staff in the hospital were reluctant to engage us
in the problem solving process. So much so that other
staff associated with them tool the same stance.

25. We had too much data and suffered from analysis
paralysis. It too months to go through the data and this
really stopped our momentum.

26. Education
Product
Interaction
Monitoring
Culture
In the end we settled on five smaller problems to solve,
education, product, interaction with patients, monitoring
and reporting and the culture in the hospital.

27. Using these themes we engaged the hospital staff
introduced them to our designers and worked through
the problems.

28. What came out of all
this?
A lot of great ideas came from these sessions, but
beyond these we learnt something special.

29. Beyond the physical
We’re seeing change
in the system.
Engaging the hospital staff the way we did, we started
to change the way they see the environment. They were
able to identify problems and address them.

30. Thanks
This change in the long run will be more powerful than
the tactics that will solve the immediate problems
associated with hand washing and infection control.
This change with some luck will start to change the
system and lead to sustained behaviour change.

31. Thanks