Summary
In this talk, Schwartz reflects on his decade-long experience leading design at GE Healthcare, a division of a massive global company. He starts by invoking personal healthcare stories, including his mother's caregiving journey, to ground the importance of empathy in design. Schwartz highlights the challenge of creating products for diverse contexts, such as a fetal monitor for Indonesian mothers versus U.S. hospitals, stressing that healthcare design must consider emotional, cultural, economic, and social factors worldwide. He discusses the initial lack of strategic design presence at GE and how he and his team worked to integrate empathy and patient-centered thinking into the company's culture by using stories, workshops, and immersive experiences. Schwartz shares strategies for overcoming resistance, like being "subversive with goodness in your heart" and gaining trust by solving pressing business problems. He describes creating compelling design studios that become destinations for leadership collaboration. Schwartz elaborates on using lessons from other industries and real-world examples (like a mother in Appalachia or women in Saudi Arabia) to teach empathy. He also details innovative pediatric healthcare designs that reduce sedation by engaging children in storytelling and adventure themes. Finally, he stresses the importance of designers understanding business language to partner effectively and leave a lasting legacy that integrates design deeply into healthcare innovation at GE.
Key Insights
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Embedding empathy through personal stories helps global teams reconnect with healthcare’s human impact.
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Design at GE Healthcare was initially undervalued and fragmented, lacking shared language and principles.
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Cultural and contextual differences profoundly affect healthcare product design and require localized approaches.
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Resistance to design can be addressed by solving urgent business problems and demonstrating concrete value.
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Being 'subversive with goodness in your heart' means pushing design culture quietly but persistently within corporate constraints.
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Building design studios as open, engaging destinations attracts leadership and fosters collaboration.
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Using metaphors and examples from outside healthcare breaks down guards and inspires new perspectives.
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Designing pediatric medical experiences as adventures significantly reduces sedation requirements.
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Designers must learn to speak the language of business to gain strategic influence and partnership.
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Documenting design journey maps and legacies enables teams to reflect, plan, and evolve design integration over time.
Notable Quotes
"You have to touch people and remind them of their own why."
"Healthcare is messy, often unempathic, sometimes industrial."
"The stuff we make isn’t self-aware; you are responsible for its impact."
"Being subversive with goodness in your heart means pushing change with respect."
"Bloody noses are badges of honor when challenging the status quo."
"Find somebody with a big problem and solve it with your design tools; don’t just talk about design."
"To succeed, designers must show up as business people in their discipline."
"Taking people into other worlds helps them understand empathy in new ways."
"We teach engineers what they did as children to help them remember how to be creative."
"Design isn’t the caboose anymore; it’s becoming a strategic partner at the table."
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