Summary
The talk featured insights from GE Healthcare's design initiatives, highlighting the organization’s journey in mapping user experiences and integrating design into healthcare services. The speaker recounted how they navigated challenges post-recession by adopting an entrepreneurial mindset to grow the design team and establish internal consulting services across various GE divisions. They emphasized the importance of journey mapping in understanding user experiences and mentioned collaboration with an external design firm to refine this process. Additionally, the discussion covered effective strategies for evaluating diverse candidates and the necessity of aligning hiring expectations early on. Metrics used to assess design success included task completion rates, error counts, and user delight. Attendees also learned about the concept of delight forums, initially intended to enhance shared understanding, but which ultimately fell short of achieving significant organizational impact. The talk concluded with practical advice for advocating user experience in legacy systems, urging practitioners to leverage real user testimonials to convey the importance of UX.
Key Insights
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Design has been a part of GE Healthcare for over 80 years, evolving to meet modern challenges.
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The speaker emphasized the need for designers to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset within organizations.
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Internal consulting within GE Healthcare allowed the design team to leverage funds and rebuild their resources despite budget constraints.
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Journey mapping was developed in partnership with a design firm to enhance understanding of user experience.
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Effective hiring practices involve aligning expectations on candidate attributes before the interview process.
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Using metrics like task success rates and errors can gauge the effectiveness of design in user tasks.
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Real user testimonials and frustrations can powerfully advocate for UX improvements in organizations with legacy systems.
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Delight forums intended to foster shared understanding but often resulted in discussions with little actionable impact.
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Creating a shared language across diverse teams can enhance collaboration and user-centric design.
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Engaging stakeholders directly in design processes leads to greater understanding and support for UX initiatives.
Notable Quotes
"When I got there in very late, oh seven, there was about 28 people. There's about 60 now."
"We just decided that we would become consultants internally and we started doing work."
"We looked at number of errors to complete that task, so pretty basic metrics."
"We also looked at various measures of delight."
"We brought in customers to make a point about how difficult it is to do their jobs."
"The only thing we did was every single word in the entire presentation were direct quotes from end users about the frustration they felt."
"It's impossible to dispute a pin you get from customers."
"Help them solve it in a novel way, and suddenly everybody else is telling your story for you."
"Embrace the people who love you and focus on the fence sitters."
"If you go to where you're loved, you'll find more support for your design ideas."
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