photo credit: Emery Co Photo
Welcome to Redesigning the Hospital Birth Experience. This experimental d. school pop-up class will use the hospital labor and delivery experience as a backdrop for learning design thinking methodology. Below are some answers to questions we have been receiving from students and Stanford community members:
What will be the teaching approach?
Our approach will be to give students the opportunity to gain empathy for the “users” in labor and delivery. The only way to discover needs is to spend time observing and listening to users, and then synthesizing the insights gained from that experience. We are very grateful to CAPE (Center for Advanced Pediatric & Perinatal Education) at Stanford for running the birth simulations, and for the many clinicians and new parents who will be volunteering their time in this class.
How will you be stimulating student’s thinking?
First, we are interested in having the students understand L&D from various perspectives: mom, clinician, supporting family members, and baby. Second, students will learn techniques for conducting successful interviews. Working in small interdisciplinary groups, students will learn how to extract potential needs based on what they have observed and heard. Third, they will learn techniques for rapid low-res prototyping and testing. Finally, they will have the opportunity to present their favorite prototypes to the same clinicians and parents who they interviewed and gain valuable feedback. We are attempting to create one full loop of the design thinking process.
What would make this class successful?
Well, first it is the commitment we are getting from the amazing clinicians, staff and parents who are involved in this class. Second, it’s the enthusiasm of the students (which I believe is already there), and lastly, it’s our ability as instructors to help students understand an overview of design thinking principals without getting bogged down in too many details. Our goal is for the students to learn the process by actually doing it.