Facilitating Design Thinking Workshop to Prioritize Challenges

Project Specs

Scope of Work: Uncover the main digital challenges that the medical system needs to address

Client Contacts: Chief Information Officer and Physician in Chief

Team: 2 UX Designers; 3 Sales & Healthcare Industry Experts

Timeline: Three weeks

My Role: Organize and facilitate the design thinking workshop and synthesize the results

Software: PowerPoint and Mural

Summary

Leadership at a non-profit medical system based in Delaware knows its technology is behind today’s standards, but it has struggled to make a digital transformation. We knew of several challenges the company was facing:

  • Diverse Patient Needs: Serving a beachside community, the company’s patient population includes both low-income residents in rural areas as well as high-income groups who may only use the system seasonally

  • Slow to the Cloud: The company has not made a full transition to the Cloud. Yet across the healthcare industry, patients have ever-higher standards for on-demand access to care from providers and their medical data

  • Difficulties Prioritizing: The company has a real appetite to improve its digital infrastructure as well as its customer- and provider-facing software, but it doesn’t know where to start

Avanade’ Approach

Microsoft and Avanade had been in conversations with the company for months – Avanade created an opportunity to advance toward a project by traveling to Delaware to lead a design thinking workshop.

Ensuring Continuity

Previously, Avanade and Microsoft led the company through an “Innovation Day” at a Microsoft Technology Center in Philadelphia. We positioned the design thinking workshop as building on these topics and discussions.

Maximizing Participation

We invited key stakeholders from the company to join the workshop, including:

  • Chief Information Officer

  • Physician in Chief, Chief Population Health Officer

  • Strategic Planning & Business Development

  • Electronic Health Record Manager

  • Chief Communications Officer

Solution

We structured and staffed the workshop to highlight the combined capabilities of Advisory and Avanade X, while tailoring the discussion to the company’s specific needs

Healthcare vector art

Industry Expertise

Avanade showcased its deep healthcare experience by inviting it Global Healthcare Lead, North America Healthcare Advisory Lead, and Healthcare Business Applications Lead to participate in the workshop

Double diamond vector art

LUMA Methods

We chose activities from the LUMA design thinking system that enable the group to diverge (generate a wide range of ideas) and then converge (reach consensus)

Target vector art

Client Needs

We used our understanding of the client’s existing challenges and circumstances to frame the workshop. Throughout, we emphasized putting users first and let the activities lead us to reach conclusions together.

The Workshop

The workshop agenda was focused on defining the greatest areas of need and gaining consensus on how they should be prioritized:

  • What’s On Your Radar + Voting 

  • Statement Starters + Voting 

  • Importance / Difficulty Matrix

  • Recap & Next Steps

A common criticism of design thinking is that workshops don’t lead to tangible results. To combat this, we made sure all activities contributed toward the goal of delivering a strategic project roadmap at the end of the session.

We provided an overview deck before the workshop to set expectations and explain our approach. After the workshop, we provided artifacts and analysis from the discussions. This documentation lays the foundation for a future project.

Results

While the opportunity is still ongoing, we feel the workshop energized the company toward possible projects, built trust in Avanade and conveyed a clear path forward

“Team Avanade, great job yesterday. I enjoyed the time together and think we produced some great output. I look forward to next steps.”
— VP, Chief Population Health Officer

Summary of My Contributions

  • Developed an agenda and prepared a presentation and materials for the design thinking workshop

  • Co-facilitated an in-person, on-site LUMA design thinking workshop with several senior leaders from the client

  • Synthesized themes and insights from the workshop and collected them for the client in a presentation