UCHD at the Design 4 Health conference 2011 27/07/2011
The first international Design 4 Health conference took place at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) from 13 – 15 July. Hosted by SHU’s Art & Design Research Centre and Lab4Living the conference explored the relationship between design, and health and wellbeing. Attended by designers, healthcare professionals, practitioners, funding bodies, researchers and users the conference created a diverse and a truly cross disciplinary platform for discussion.
On the Thursday afternoon UCHD led a workshop, ‘Service Design in the NHS’. The workshop was well attended and great fun – panellist Tom Downes (Health Foundation Quality Improvement Fellow and consultant geriatrician) demonstrating the benefit of moving from a system of chaotic push to self pacing pull using tins of beans and unsuspecting audience members was very entertaining.
The other panellists were UCHD’s own Peter Wright providing the academic perspective and Helen Baxter from the NHS Institute discussed the value and success of the Experience Based Design (EBD) approach within the NHS. Sadly the fourth panel member, Deborah Szebeko, founder of the social design agency thinkpublic was unable to attend.
Geraldine Fitzpatrick from Vienna University of Technology chaired the session, facilitating some very lively discussion and debate. Many audience members also took the opportunity to give a five minute presentation of their own project / perspective. This all added up to a great session that could have filled the three days of the conference on its own.
Discussions continued over wine and canapés with an opportunity to look around the conference exhibition – a showcase of work from an international selection of artists, designers and researchers.
