Change and Novelty for Industrial Designers in Complex Design Projects for Healthcare

from the article: "In the past decades, industrial design practice has broadened from designing (mass-)products towards e.g. the design of services, experiences and systems. With this broadening, it is questionable how models of design processes still fit todays’ industrial design practice. By means of process research, this study investigates new roles that designers currently take in practice. It addresses the question how ways of working change for an industrial designer dealing with an open design challenge. The context of research is a design project for a large academic hospital that is in the middle of a large-scale renovation. The project is executed by a design agency with 10+ years of experience in designing healthcare products. However, this project concerns the improvement of service, rather than a product. The data collection (during 21 months) is based on principles of organizational ethnography, combined with interviews. The analysis is based on an events-based approach and provides understanding in how a senior designer experienced the project flow and how he adapted ways of working in eight main events of the project. The findings include strategies of a senior designer dealing with change and novelty in a complex design project in healthcare, and scaffolding concepts in the light of existing theory."