IDEO's forays into healthcare and insights

IDEO is a neat company I learned about when I read the book The Ten Faces of Innovation by the founder's brother David Kelley, who is the firm's general manager. In the 24 September 2006 issue of US News & World Report, an article on the firm titled "The Deans of Design" describes IDEO's many forays into healthcare.

For instance, IDEO was hired by a St. Louis hospital to improve the patient experience in its emergency room.

While the admitting and treatment process might seem logical and orderly to staff, it appears chaotic and confusing to patients. So IDEO created a simple "map" that the hospital staff could give each incoming patient outlining the seven steps of the emergency room experience, starting with the triage nurse. It also recommended cards that each member of the staff could hand out so the patients could keep track of who's who.



Another instance involves redesigning a device that would handeled often by nurses.

Years of customer observation also helped the company design a portable electronic device for use in hospitals. One option was to put the 20-pound device on a rolling cart. But IDEO realized that nurses would hate hauling the thing around. So designers decided to shape it like a classic 1930s doctor's bag, sturdy handle and all. That design not only made the device easier to carry, but the visual iconography really connected with nurses.

A third instance, though not as fully fleshed out in the article, involves a new tool designed with the involvement of surgeons. And yet another instance has IDEO working with Vocera to create a 2-way wireless device to be clipped onto a shirt pocket (labeled "Star Trek-esque") that is "ideal for hospitals."

Much of this article was about distilling IDEO's keys to innovation. There are three. One is "getting out of the office and into the field." When IDEO sought to redo the St. Louis hospital's ER, it could have interviewed patients to gain insights. But instead, "the firm went up close and personal. For instance, one IDEO anthropologist pretended to be a patient and managed to videotape his entire emergency room experience."

Two is "rapidly prototyping initial ideas and exposing them to users." An anecdote about this key is related to the surgical tool. "During a meeting with a roomful of surgeons from the company's advisory board, not much was getting done... Seeing that this sort of abstract back and forth wasn't getting the group anywhere, an IDEO engineer stepped out of the room for five minutes and came back with a crude tool model slapped together out of a whiteboard marker, a black film canister, and a clothespinlike clip. 'That prototype crystallized the conversation in the room and allowed the project to move forward,' [founder Tom] Kelley says."

And the third key is "storytelling." For Vocera, "IDEO produced a five-minute film that the firm later used to get venture-capital funds and that served as a basis for marketing the product."

Another key to innovation -- not specifically stated by the article's writer -- was mentioned at the beginning of the piece: an interdisciplinary team approach to tackling problems. This firm, "a dream come true for the concerned parents of liberal arts majors everywhere-employs anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, and sociologists, among other right-brain thinkers, to create, improve, or reimagine all manner of products, services, work spaces, and business systems."

Frankly the coolest part of this piece on IDEO is how people at the company used human anatomy to create a new mouthpiece for water bottles.

[B]ikers used a two-step process with the water bottle: pull the nozzle out with their teeth and squeeze the bottle. So, using the human tricuspid heart valve as a bit of inspirational biomimicry, the IDEO team designed a simple self-sealing valve that opens only when squeezed.