Humanizing the HUN through service design  

Imagine designing a service to strengthen one of the most important visions for health systems: improving and optimizing the humanized service. The Hospital Universitario Nacional (HUN) sought to generate solutions aligned with the humanization of all and it was an opportunity. Service design allows to understand the point of view of those involved, creates a scenario which ensures high-quality standards and improves the experience of all users. 
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Supported by @Hospital Universitario Nacional.

HUN
⏰Timeline

2022
One year- period

📦Toolkit

Journey mapping
Paper prototyping
Interviews
Personas
Usability testing
Co-creation
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Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
After effects
Premier Pro
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💡Role and contributions

Service designer, researcher
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- End to end experience design.
- Facilitator.
- Data analysis.
- Brainstorming.
- Accessibility review.
- Hospital Managers and ethics committee presentation.

🙏Team

Individual project

The challenge

Designing for health care environments is incredibly complex because each area is different. For this reason, it was necessary to define a starting point to propose solutions on humanization and implement the service design through co-creation. In this case, I focused on the outpatient department, which is defined as “any professional encounter or contact, as an act of health service, between a non-hospitalized individual and a health worker responsible for the evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, or referral of that person in that encounter” (World HealthOrganization, n.d).


    The main goal

    Strengthen humanization in the HUN's outpatient department through service design.

    Background

    The Hospital Universitario Nacional (Corporación Salud UN, 2020) is located in Bogota, Colombia. It's an autonomous corporation that provides health services and, in turn, contributes to education and medical research. In the inauguration, the director proposed different mechanisms to preserve the organizational culture, which involves the concept of humanization.

    HUN

    Copyright Simpliroute

    Process


    HUN

    Trends

    HUN
    Gamification
    HUN
    Humanization
    HUN
    New healthcare
    environments

    Finding out and learning

    As humanization is a subject not directly related to service design, it was necessary to do some research, understand the concept and look for some design and humanization references to address the problem: 

    HUN

    We can all contribute

    Interviews

    The participants interviewed were:  

    • Doctors
    • Patients
    • Relatives
    • Director of the humanization program
    • Director of Communications department  

    The following findings were the most relevant:

    HUN

    Thinking

    As humanization is a subject not directly related to service design, it was necessary to do some research, understand the concept and look for some design and humanization references to have bases and address the problem: 

    HUN

    Generating

    Then I designed the journey map of the ideal outpatient service, and I proposed three levels of intervention to implement it:
    ‍

    HUN

    Filtering and realising

    Level 1: physical

    This level focuses on the elderly because they are the most frequent clients of the HUN. It shows how signage becomes more enjoyable, entertaining and easy to understand. In addition, since the elderly are not akin to digital channels, the approach to signage had to be physical, easy to read and coupled with the characteristics and needs of the elderly. Besides, I considered the signage regulations for the country.

    The users expressed that it would be very favorable for them to have a place to consult the service they are looking for and locate the apartment before the appointment. That would save them effort and time when they arrived at the HUN, so during the first interaction with the experience, a map with the floor information would be helpful.

    Users of different profiles requested a route map at the entrance during the co-creation session. They also explained that it was necessary to know the location of each service. This proposal would allow humanizing that process a little more.

    Finally, it was essential to propose a more dynamic way in which users could locate themselves more easily. Hence, I developed floor signage on the hospital's first floor. The floor proposal graphically presented the office numbers and distant services to find them more easily. Thus, a user who did not necessarily read the map could be located from the starting point when arriving at the hospital.

    HUN

    Level 2: technological

    This level focuses on users who are related to technology and on the humanization project approach. It is the digitization of level 1 so that users can locate themselves from any device entering the HUN website and thus use GPS from anywhere. The technological level points to the humanization characteristics: having a better relationship between the users and health care.

    HUN

    Level 3: Accessible
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    HUN

    Testing

    Of these three levels, I carried out the implementation of level 1. I established metrics (key factors that defined the success of the project and its final execution) to identify the different types of values and contributions to humanization in the HUN. I defined metrics to continue improving the humanization model. Based on the definition of criteria from humanization and verification of success in service design oriented towards acceptance, popularity and reception. 

    Metrics and assessment of success: 

    • Usage rate.
    • Use time.
    • Observation of different reactions.
    • Problems and incidents.
    • Comments.

      All the results were presented to the HUN’s humanization team. At the moment, they are implementing the phase 1 of the proposal.

      Learnings

      Service design helps to create relationship models and see the humanization from the user to improve the quality and health care. It allows a comprehensive approach from different axes: cultural, relational, technological and visionary. In addition, it anticipates future scenarios, projecting the changing dynamics of the provision of services in the health system. At the same time, it works as an interdisciplinary axis that adapts to different disciplines from a global vision of humanization considering users, factors, processes, elements and relationships.

      Co-creation is the clue to innovation.

      Next steps

      - Phase 1 success measurement.
      - Development in detail of phase 2.

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      alejandrasierra343@gmail.com