Why design?

Good design is a process that can be used to generate innovative ideas and deliver new products and services. It can help you shape patient-centered and cost-effective services and environments.

A design-led innovation process can help managers, planners and clinicians create a modern NHS, centred around high quality patient care, staff safety and cost savings through increased productivity. Design can help you develop integrated QIPP plans and improve performance against A&E clinical quality indicators.

Designers draw on a number of principles and approaches to turn good ideas into innovative products, services, environments and experiences.

Understanding users

Good designers spend time with the end-users of the products and services they create and involve them in the process of designing and making. They do this to understand what it is that people actually need and want, rather than make assumptions. Through this process, designers often uncover latent as well as known needs. This ensures what they create is useful, useable and desirable.

Collaboration

Because it focuses on creating the best possible responses to real human needs, design is intrinsically a very collaborative process. Designers will collaborate with a range of people – from users and frontline staff to investors and experts – and bring together a multi-disciplinary team to tackle all of the issues involved. Collaborating with the people who will deliver a solution means that an idea is more likely to be realised.

Visualisation

With a grounding in the creative arts, designers work visually to make things simple and easy to understand. Through visualisation, designers synthesise often complex ideas which helps communication and understanding with users and other stakeholders.

Prototyping

Designers build and test solutions early in the development process. This iterative approach means solutions are refined and improved many times before they are rolled out – a process known as prototyping. Prototyping helps iron out any errors and issues before money is committed to fully implementing a solution. This mitigates risk, since the solution is less likely to fail having been tried and improved many times.