Gabriele Khan - Design Thinking for Innovation final paper

Challenge    I am in charge of the operations of a company that provides medical digital imaging solutions

to hospitals and clinics. These solutions comprise hardware such as servers, work stations,

medical grade monitors, direct radiology and computer radiology digitizers among others.

The digitized imaging is then managed by a Picture Archiving and Communications System

that works together with a Radiology Information System, in charge of managing the imaging

department workflow.  You probably got losted or bored halfway the previous paragraph or, if you read it all, are

wondering what does my company really do, what value it offers, and why would a hospital

need such solution. This is not any different to what many of our potential customers felt

every time we approached them to start a conversation. In other cases, the customer had an

idea of the solution but did not know exactly why he needed it, the scope of it and the many

advantages they could derive from it. There was and still is some confusion in our market

regarding the best way to implement these solutions, in part due to companies that focus on

selling technology more than on solving problem through it by designing tailor made

solutions.    Selection    We thought it was necessary to do something to educate our potential customers on the

advantages of implementing digital medical imaging solutions, the scope and scalability

nature of it and how it could help them solve their pain points and get results that were not

possible with their current analog processes, such as generating data and information for

decision making. We needed our customers informed and on board before moving toward a

proposal to close a deal.  To do this we selected a storytelling approach, and decided to hire a marketing company to

produce an informative video of our solution. We thought that a video was a good tool to

illustrate and provide a good idea of all the components of our solution and how they worked

together to generated value, without needing to go too in depth with the technicalities

involved.    Application  Even if the production of the video happend before I took this course, I can relate to many

aspects mentioned in the interview to Sam Martinez from Mars, Inc. that were key in

producing a compelling and effective story for our customers.  For instance, we decided not to do a video focused on the technology behind our solution

but on the impact it has on patients that went to a hospital to have an x-ray or other medical

imaging study, as we wanted to appeal to our audience (hospital directors and heads of

imaging service) by highlighting aspects of their everyday life that they could easily relate to;

and so we created an animated character called “Don Salvador”, an elder that needed an

x-ray exam. Even if patients were our indirect customers, we decided that telling the story of

a day of a patient at a hospital was a good way to show want they went through when the

imaging service used analog technology (long appointment deferrals, long waits to get the

Gabriele Khan - Design Thinking for Innovation final paper

exam done and the diagnosis ready, the need of repeating a study because the image was

not clear enough, and the use hazardous chemicals in the film developing process, among

others) compared to using a digital technology. Therefore, the story took place in a hospital

that was using our solution and Salvador was telling the differences he perceived from this

experience as opposed to previous exams he had taken on hospitals with analog processes.

This was key as it allowed our audience to understand the “why” of implementing our

solutions as they had to deal with unsatisfied patients and radiologist everyday that suffered

the inefficiencies of the analog technology.  Technology itself was present in the story but it was on the background and always tied to

the benefits it produced to the patient of the radiologists so it had meaning to the audience.  To conclude, I think the video was a success as it engaged the audience by showing the

problems an old technology was creating to their own staff (doctors and x-ray technicians),

to their patients and the opportunity cost of not having digitized data to the hospital

administrators, and it made them realize and feel the needed to take action and solve those

problems. As André mentioned in his interview, the main character was a representation of a

big wicked problem every hospital was facing (by not being able to provide good care of their

patients), we created a moment to reflect on it and presented a way to solve this challenge.    Insights  By producing this video we realized that there were people within our organization that was

not clear about the value we offered through our solutions. Even technical staff that did not

fully understand its benefits and the impact to our customers and patients, because they

were too specialized in certain parts of the solution (i.e. software of hardware,

implementation, training, etc). The video was shared internally with all areas and it helped

engage everyone with the business as it was clear that with every project we implemented

there were patients benefiting from it. It gave our business a good purpose to work for.  As our staff got more engaged we realized that we had untapped potential and understood

that going forward we needed to share and make an effort to explain any new company

initiative even with staff that were not directly involved.    Approach  I am very satisfied with the results and insights we got during the production of the video and

when it was shared internally and with potential customers. The empathy towards our

customers is part of our company’s culture and this was useful when writing the story of our

animated video as we knew their pain points very well. If I should tackle this challenge again

from the beginning I would choose the same storytelling approach and media. Still, even if

we feel we know our customers so well, I would involve them in the process of creating the

story. Many times we have shared the video with potential customers, they come out with

new pain points and aspects of their everyday life that are not included in our story and that

would have added great value to it.

