Page 89 - Experience Based Co-design - a toolkit for Australia

HOW
1. Identify and profile service scenarios of interest
Identify the service times and places where the issues occur or where you would like to make improvements. If you have explored patient experiences, you will be aware of the times and places where difficult experiences occur.
To create a scenario, simply list the elements of the scene, including anything that contributes to patient difficulties. To help, you might imagine you are setting up a film or stage set. What things and people need to be there, and how are they arranged? What happens in the scenario?
It is useful to avoid ‘average’ or ‘typical’ scenarios – be more specific and use extremes to accentuate and explore issues. For example, if the scenario is based on an outpatient clinic, make it very busy – noisy, full, long queues, stressed staff, anxious patients and so on.
Focus on the exact time and place. For example, if you are exploring letters written to patients, base your scenario in a kitchen or living room where the letter might be read.
It can be very helpful to quickly draw the scene and make notes next to it – this helps document what it is and why you are exploring it. Then evolve the sketch as you learn – it’s a very easy way to record your learnings. Keep your sketches very basic – don’t worry how pretty the sketch looks.
2. Identify and profile patient and staff personas of interest
When you have your scenarios, develop your patient and staff personas.
Start by giving the person a name and then bring them to life. List their demographic qualities (age, gender, ethnicity and education); their physique with their physical abilities; their psychological state and abilities and their social supports. Do this for both patients and staff.
It can be very useful to sketch the persona (stick figures with a bit of detail are fine). Sketching often helps make the person more real.
3. Create full scenarios with personas
To create a full scenario with personas, start by taking a basic scenario and putting the relevant personas into it to develop a brief story about how things would normally work. As you do this, include issues and how staff and patient personas react to them.
Example: Scenario with persona:
Scenario: a patient is in bed on a shared ward. It is visiting hours and the room is full of visitors.
Adapted with permission from healthcodesign.org.nz