What does great Experience Design look like?
And how to create customer experiences with empathy and compassion in the world of art, innovation and digitalization? This was the key topic and focus during the 3rd DatB Collaboration Circle on May 18th with guest speaker Harald Moser from Ars Electronica and Alexandra Zahn from Siemens Healthineers. They both gave key insights into how they design great experiences for their customers – and listening to them was an experience by itself!
Exploring the world of art, technology and society!
Taking a deep dive into the intersection of art, technology, society and design as well as its meaning for the future, Harold Moser gave a glimpse of the impressive ecosystem and multifaceted approach of Ars Electronica. Recapping the history of the organization he explained, since the year 1979, Ars Electronica has been focusing on the acceleration of digitalization with a major focus on its role in social development as well. Two key aspects of the organization are the ArsElectronica Centre as well as the ArsElectronica Festival, where people can experience the intersection between art, technology and society at first hand.
Together with artists, scientists, designers and developers, the organization tries out different ways of understanding and exploring the visionary ends of digitalization.
What was stunning and very insightful was when Harald Moser explained their approach when it comes to designing an experience, for their festival in Linz, Austria or for client projects such as with the European Space Agency, for example. From establishing the team, developing a joint vision and concept to the realization and manifestation of outcomes, it’s always about understanding, innovating, creating – as well as playing, eating and laughing together 😊 He also introduced the concepts of Art Thinking and Sustainability Thinking, which was extremely interesting and inspiring to hear.
When Works is all the play!
Undertaking a truly empathetic and user centered approach for humanizing healthcare, Alexandra Zahn from Siemens Healthineers presented her experience of a co-creation endeavor with kids.
With the idea to focus and understand the emotions, thoughts and experiences children go through during procedures such as radiology, she and the team found an insightful way to design the patient experience with the children. When one looks at the complexity of addressing the experience of a child, the most challenging part is how to simplify it enough to discuss it with the kids at an eye level? Furthermore, the experience doesn’t limit itself to the kids but also engages parents as well as the technologists engaged with the context.
Creating a holistic experience with the latter stakeholders, that minimizes the anxiety and fears at various levels, a small-scale mockup of the radiology procedure was created. But how did the mockup help children to initiate a conversation, one must wonder?
The Design Thinking approach of focusing on 4–10-year-olds, brought the significance of role play with toys, characters such as a giraffe, elephant etc. as a solution. In addition, the setup was created wherein the children could not only associate with a tangible situation but also render their visual understanding of the space.
Allowing the approach to provide a playful environment wherein kids could formulate their narrative of the procedure, opened the ability of true co-creation, with a comprehensive patient experience.
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I’m happy to have taken part in the collaboration circle and I’m already looking forward to the next session!
