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How can Design Thinking process help us have empathy for and assign meaning to an illness?
Context
Our client discovered a molecule for a yet undefined but serious and often confounding condition. We revealed through our research that in this space - without treatment, clear diagnosis, coordination of care, monitoring, or vocabulary - there was a deep need for definition, education and empathy.
Our Approach
Our Design Thinking Process
DISCOVER
Our multi-staged engagement enabled progressive and efficient learning. Utilizing our US research as a baseline, we overlaid the nuance of global cultural and healthcare environments.
EMPATHIZE
We used mixed methods (digital diaries, ethnographic interviews, dyads, strategic foresight) over multiple engagements with a range of stakeholders (HCPs, Patients and Caregivers) to understand who the key stakeholder are: emotionally, socially, and professionally, uncovering key motivations, pain points, drivers/barriers and heuristics that shape their experiences and orientations.
DEFINE
Over multiple facilitated discussions with the client team, we continued to expand our collective knowledge, refine the ‘problem’ definition and identify strategic implications. Leveraging deep insight uncovered in the Empathize phase, we defined the problem as the condition itself - one characterized by ambiguity and unpredictability and feelings of deep uncertainty and powerlessness - in addition to unique physical manifestations that were unknown to the client.
IMPLEMENT
We brought together the global commercial team for empathy and innovation workshops. Partnering with our client, we co-facilitated an empathy session to immerse a broad team of stakeholders and internalize the learning. This lead immediately to, and served as the basis of, a focussed and highly generative innovation session to address unmet needs identified in our work.
Our Impact
By developing a global patient journey and 3 global personas, we created the foundational knowledge, empathetic understanding and internal alignment our client needed for a successful path to launch. We identified patient-centric endpoints to guide research outcomes and 7 key unmet needs as springboards for innovation.
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