This week we focused on human-centered design in lectures and became familiar with this sort of design process. Several ground-breaking inventions and innovations were highlighted that were conceived using the human-centered design process. It was so interesting to hear the backstory on some very innovations that are now almost commonplace. This design process was also great to learn about and I think it will be able to help me in any future design situation.

Observing the world around you and finding needs to fill is both a great challenge and accomplishment. Being able to identify a need people didn’t even know they had can lead to come of the greatest and most useful inventions. My favorite example of this is Steve Jobs. His life’s work is a testament to the value of identifying unique needs individuals aren’t even aware of and fulfilling them. Asking someone to define what they need is not always the best course of action since in most instances, the individual doesn’t know the answer to their need.

This week’s assignment was also very interesting and provided great insight into the stark contrast between healthcare standards in America and in developing countries. We watched videos touring four different hospital settings, two in high resource areas and two in lower resource areas, and were asked to come up with a list of needs for each of the environments. I struggled quite a bit trying to come up with needs for the first two settings since they were already well stocked and prepared. When I moved to the last two settings however, it was not difficult to come up with a long list of needs. It was shocking to see how many of the necessary things for a hospital to run that these clinics were missing. Something as simple as one computer monitor could radically improve the way these hospitals run. All health records are recorded with pen on paper, making these records difficult to access when needed and storing these files requires much more space. Electronic filings could provide a lot of necessary space that these clinics need for storage of supplies or patient space.

I am looking forward to learning more about the realities of healthcare in other regions and improving my critical thinking in brainstorming ways to improve it.