Team Work Strategy

For the first few weeks of this module we’ve been given the task of doing collective research on health care on groups of five ore so. I’m in a group with were given the task with Beth, Sean, Sophie and Emma.

The first thing we had to do was get connected so we could make a plan so I put everyone in a snapchat group. Snap chat isn’t really the best place for sharing research and ideas though so I suggested moving to discord because I thought it would be much better since we could make different channels for different topics and there’s the option to use voice channels of go on video chat if we wanted to discuss things. Everyone was onboard with the idea which was great.

The first thing we did when we moved to discord was decide how we’re going to go about researching and allocating jobs. Together we landed on the idea of dividing up the research by user groups. We settled on each taking one of five age groups. Emma chose to research babies, Sophie took middle aged, Beth chose children, Sean got elderly and I was keen enough to research teens.

With that, we were able to set off and do our thing and we have the discord to report back to with our findings and to discuss ideas.

Design For Health Care

Online Research

Here are some of the online resources I looked at this week…

Take away

Looking at these really helped illustrate to me the shifts happening in the healthcare industry with the evolution of digital healthcare over the years and how designers and design thinking fit in and play a hug role in shaping digital healthcare.

13 – 25 Year Olds’ Health and Well being

Initial Online Research

Starting out with research this week I tried to keep it as general as possibleI decided to broaden my scope from teens to teens and young adults so, ages 13-25 because there was a huge gap between myself and Sophie who decided to research the middle age range of 45-65. I think I broadened it to reasonable amount, I think to thirty would be too much dissonance.

I think I tend to instinctively want to explore and find a solution to a particular problem so that I can get stuck into designing but with this task, we’re not diving straight into designing a product, our goal here is getting as general a grasp on healthcare as we can, not exploring product ideas just yet.

With that, here are some of the things I found online resources I found this week…

Adolescent and young adult health – World Health Organisation
The 10 Biggest Teen Health Risks – verywellhealth.com (This article is very America focused so some risks aren’t as applicable to UK and Ireland but there’s still a lot of helpful overview of health risks for teens
Worried about Your Teenager? – NHS
The Impact of Social Media on Young People’s Health and Wellbeing: Evidence, GuideLines and Actions (This one’s a PDF I found scrolling through Google Scholar. More so relates to how adolescents learn about health online rather than resulting health issues from excessive social media exposure but still, it’s pretty interesting.)
Progress, Culture and Young People’s Wellbeing – Richard Eckersley
spunout.ie (lots of good articles on here about issues affecting young people and how to deal with them, in Ireland specifically. I think that look at sites like this intended as a resource to assist young people with mental and physical wellbeing issues is a great way to find out what issues are affecting young people most of all.)
www.healthforteens.co.uk (This seems to be the NHS’s equivalent to spunout.ie. Same thing really except this ones more specifically for teens and the site design is pretty cool.)
Adolescent mental health – World Health Organisation( I know we’re supposed to avoid designing a mental health product but it’s hard to avoid researching that area since it’s so significant. I’ll just try to be more in depth with researching in other areas instead I guess.)
Adolescent Pregnancy – World Health Organisation
Adolescent sexual and reproductive health Q&A – World Health Organisation
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Adolescents and youth Q&A – World Health Organisation
Guidelines on mental health promotive and preventive interventions for adolescents – World Health Organisation
…

Typing out all these links here wasn’t really the most practical way to do things so instead I started compiling resources on a big miro board that you can look at here.

Notes and Take Aways

I know we’re not meant to start really honing in yet but I have noticed mental health being kinda the most overarchingly prevalent issue, not just because my generation seem to try to take more action about mental health or because a lot of us a re priming with excessive amounts of stress, but I’m seeing, not only in the research I’ve done this week, but also just day to day being a young person and witnessing myself and my fellow gen z both on and offline, that a lot of healthcare issues can have a huge effect and/or are affected by ones mental well being. I know Paul said not to do a mental health app since it’s a painfully oversaturated market and I understand and respect that… but, what if I chose to design a product that targeted ones mental wellbeing by focusing on those other factors like sleep, exercise and eating habits. So, technically not a mental health app. This is the kind of thing I know myself definitely could use, as I’m often falling off the wagon of mental stability and slipping out of healthy habits when I get stressed and overwhelmed, like many others my age. I think there would especially be a good market for it for people like myself and my peers, in college/university, living on our own for the first time in our lives, having to get accustomed to looking after ourselves properly without parental guidance.

I’m gonna have to stop myself and put a pin in that idea for now though because we’re not meant to be coming up with product ideas just yet. After all, I still need to review the other age ranges each person of my group has been researching.