experience design

Getting from Vision to Reality: How Ethnography and Prototyping Can Solve Late-Stage Design Challenges

BRADY SIH Kaiser Permanente HILLARY CAREY Winnow Research MICHAEL C. LIN Kaiser Permanente Cast Study—In 2014, Kaiser Permanente began implementing a next-generation medical office model that reimagines the outpatient care experience, combining new architecture, workflow, and technology to create a more convenient experience for patients and a connected, efficient experience for staff and care teams. As the first next-gen facilities were being built, challenges emerged as teams across a variety of disciplines attempted to translate the model's vision into reality. Teams were making design and operational decisions in parallel, without the ability to see how their decisions impacted the overall user experience. To resolve these challenges, our innovation team at Kaiser Permanente used a hybrid make-and-observe method of prototyping and ethnography. Employing a co-creation mindset (Bødker and Grønbaek 1991), we engaged staff and patients to help us bring the future state of these next-gen clinics to life in a minimally viable way....

Semiotics: A User’s Guide to Seeing Differently

In this course, you’ll learn and apply the techniques of Semiotics for commercial applications across business and brand strategy, innovation, design, communication & activation. INSTRUCTORS: CATO HUNT & JAMES WOODHEAD, Space Doctors ENROLLMENT: 20 max SCHEDULE: November 1, 15, 29; December 13, 2023, 4:30 – 6:30pm UK time REGISTRATION: A current EPIC Membership ($150) plus…

Models of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Models

by SIMON ROBERTS, Partner, Stripe Partners This is a piece about certain types of objects. Those objects are models. I want to suggest that models are objects that are central to the various practices in which EPIC People are engaged for three reasons. Firstly, they help manage situations of uncertainty. Second, they are tools for communications. Third, they represent technologies of enchantment. Let’s take uncertainty first. Like it or not, life is full of uncertainty. “Given the inherent ambiguity of all reality and the nagging suspicion that we always exist on the edge of existential chaos, objects work to hold meanings more or less still, solid, and accessible to others as well as to one’s self” (Molotch 2003: 11).  The lives of individuals and businesses are plagued by knowledge about what may be and what might become. Both individuals and businesses are always on the look out for anchors in a world of vertigo inducing uncertainty and ambiguity. Models are just such anchors. Providing anchors in an uncertain world...