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HEALTH DESIGN

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DEBORAH SHACKLETON: This afternoon, we're here with Jonathan
Aiken, who is the Director for the Health Design Lab at Emily Carr
University of Art + Design. My name is Deborah Shackleton and I’m
one of the editors for the University’s research journal Current. So
this afternoon we are going to have an opportunity to hear Jonathan’s
ideas and themes for the HD Lab at Emily Carr. Can you describe for
us the history and the mandate of the Health Design Lab?

JONATHAN AITKEN: Health design has been a big part of Emily Carr for
many years. The GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre, BC Children’s Hospital,
Vancouver Coastal Health — all have been partners and part of the
design community for some time. Rob Inkster, the previous director

of research at Emily Carr, started an initiative in collaboration with

Ron Burnett, the University president, around building a framework or
identity developing projects under the health design banner. Essentially
what we’re doing is collecting projects and bringing them into one space
so that we can talk about them as a group. My mandate is to provide
students and faculty with really interesting complex social problems so
that they can practice design research methodologies that are participa-
tory and human centred in nature, to really get at the core of things that
need to be changed in health design.

Because Emily Carr is new in developing a research culture, what is the
role of Health Design in relationship to the overall University mandate?

| think the role of the health design lab is to show how design can be
involved in socially important problems and to give faculty and students
a practical outlet that could potentially make a difference. | think it also
shows the health community how important design can be in changing
behaviors, in changing attitudes, in changing systems, in changing the
way they effectively work within the health care system. More and more
as we are pulling partners in, they have become positively overwhelmed
by the role that design can play. This is new to them and | think we’re
making great strides in showing how an art and design school can be
relevant to the health care community.

What are some of the topics or issues that you as the director
encounter on an ongoing basis and what are your long term plans for
working with clients?

In terms of topics, | look for partners who have potential for being
ongoing long-term partners. So a new partner for Emily Carr this year is

interview with JONATHAN AITKEN (Director of Health Design Lab at Emily Carr)

Providence Health Care. They were interested in the idea of partnering
with an art and design school but unclear as to how we might proceed
with them. Quickly an industrial design project came open: designing
an ambulatory cart that might fit as part of their proposed building in
a new flexible-space, architectural solution. So that was an easy fit, but
| also thought it would be interesting to consider how communication
design might play a role in this evolving narrative as well. lt was a matter
of showing the partner how design might factor in helping them build
a story, a narrative, and how that might change for different constitu-
encies from the internal health care profession to the external public
community. | was able to take the one project and spin it into two.

Once a partner has been with Emily Carr for more than a year or two,
then it’s a more collaborative space. So then | work with the partner to
look at problems that are meaningful to them — this can’t be a theo-
retical problem but something that they’re actually encountering and
they need to solve. What | look for in terms of selecting that problem is
something that has some complexity to it, so that our students and fac
ulty really have something difficult to encounter, and that forces them
to use participatory human centred design methodology.

In the long term I’m looking for partners who can commit to being

part of an ongoing relationship so that | can get out of the space where
projects last from between a few weeks to a few months to projects that
might span several years.

Before the cameras were on we were talking a bit about the percep-
tion of health design that people have that you are designing health
as opposed to being a designer or design team that can actually offer
something to the sector. What kind of strategies are you looking at to
change that perception?

What I’m trying to do is say, yes, health is the content and the vehicle,
but really it’s about design and it’s about a way of applying creativity to
really complicated problems. Healthcare happens to have a wealth of
complicated problems so it’s a great vehicle for teaching students about
how to tackle a really complicated, difficult problem and how to apply
co-creation research methodologies to resolving that problem. The
strategy for changing people is building success stories and successful
outcomes. Helping students to realize their designs toward some kind of
successful outcome for the partner, and building that into a story, makes
students and faculty see the value of the process.

SOCIABILITY

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