Summary
There’s something shifting in our field. Increasingly, design professionals are drawn to work in domains that truly help humanity, rather than building another ‘Uber for X’, to make the rich richer. While this is an expected response to recent world events, the reality of doing such impactful work is full of obstacles. Spanton will draw on 12+ years of UX design in healthcare to share some experiences and strategies, helping you anticipate and navigate predictable obstacles, so that you can apply your skills toward solving meaningful problems and realizing your goal of a truly impactful career. The talk will cover: 5 common obstacles 3 coping mechanisms 1 big bag of hope and determination to create lasting meaningful impact
Key Insights
-
•
Working in meaningful impact domains often involves heavy regulatory constraints that are more complex and far-reaching than initially apparent.
-
•
Medical product standards, like Australia’s on-screen medication guidelines, are thoughtfully designed to prevent fatal errors and serve as crucial safety tools.
-
•
The mantra “don’t kill grandma” encapsulates the ethical imperative behind regulated healthcare design: preserving life and safety above innovation speed.
-
•
Large-scale impactful products are inherently complex, making quick fixes or simple solutions rare and slow to ship.
-
•
Scope decisions in complex projects, such as Canada's COVID exposure app, can unintentionally exclude vulnerable populations, undermining intended impact.
-
•
Meaningful work in sensitive domains demands utmost respect for users’ dignity, privacy, and emotional state, influencing every design detail.
-
•
The familiar startup motto “move fast and break things” is often inappropriate and harmful in healthcare and other sensitive fields.
-
•
Seeking smaller, quicker projects that avoid most obstacles can boost team morale and sustain motivation for longer, slower initiatives.
-
•
Direct connection with end users, such as site visits to cancer centers, revitalizes teams with empathy and real-world insight.
-
•
Anchoring work in a core meaningful purpose—whether a corporate vision, a symbolic detail like a Periwinkle carpet, or the ethical mantra—provides resilience amid challenges.
Notable Quotes
"I still kind of pause in my tracks when I see our corporate vision: a world without fear of cancer."
"Don’t kill grandma is our mantra reminding us the stakes of the tiny design details we face every day."
"Regulations aren’t obstacles to dismiss but tools to respect and embrace that help us protect grandma."
"Quick fixes rarely exist in these domains because beneath every problem are layers of complexity."
"The scoping of Canada’s COVID app protected people with new phones, but left vulnerable populations unserved."
"Working in healthcare means every tiny moment in a patient’s experience can either uphold or erode their dignity and sense of control."
"Move fast and break things doesn’t work when you’re designing for cancer patients or disaster victims."
"Shipping smaller, less complex side projects helps build team morale and energizes us for the big slow work."
"Site visits with users don’t just give actionable insight; they give us raw, humbling inspiration to keep going."
"You need to find your own mattress—a grounding purpose or phrase—that you can rely on when progress feels hopeless."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We need to break the dream and move from spectators to actors who create knowledge grounded in our reality."
Verónica Urzúa Jorge MontielThe B-side of the Research Impact
March 12, 2021
"NPS scores can rise overall, yet new and existing customers might have completely different views that get obscured."
Alberto FerreiraMaking it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
October 15, 2021
"Nothing builds collaborative relationships better than being physically present, so we make annual off-sites a priority."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed Design Operations Management
October 23, 2019
"Partner Onboarding Gold Standards act like a carrot-shaped stick tied to executive bonuses to push speed to revenue without sacrificing quality."
Todd Healy Jess GrecoDriving Change with CX Metrics
June 7, 2023
"We envision a whole new class of workers called collaboration designers."
Emilia Åström Jim KalbachUnlock Your Team’s Intelligence with Collaboration Design
June 9, 2022
"The only way to get outside your bubble is to act as if an alternative belief is true and test it."
Dave GrayLiminal Thinking: Sense-making for systems in large organizations
May 14, 2015
"You can own the infrastructure that allows knowledge to flow but you can't actually own the knowledge itself."
Kate TowseyAsk Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
"Fight to communicate your passion in a way that is digestible for other people."
JD Buckley Margot Dear Jim Kalbach Janaki KumarCOMMUNICATE: Discussion
June 14, 2018
"Always design a thing by considering it in this next largest temporal context — a day in a month, a decade in a century."
Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon RossInsights Panel
November 18, 2022
