Are there any facts and figures about the product that you'd like to share with the public?

GE Healthcare: Since its launch, more than 1,000 units of Vscan Access™ have been purchased by different Ministries of Health across Southeast Asia and Africa to strengthen primary healthcare systems and infant health. Its design and interface are so simple and user-friendly that primary healthcare professionals have increased confidence and are sharing their experiences across their community through social media.

What challenges did you encounter during the design process? If so, were these challenges unique to the Singaporean context? How did you resolve them?

Chemistry: This product is primarily focused on providing healthcare access to low-resource, developing countries. However, the breakthroughs and learnings that come through a process like this will have a ripple effect back to our home turf. Healthcare is a global challenge, and the need for well-designed patient and caregiver-centric solutions couldn’t be more critical as population grow, not only in numbers, but also in age.

From a technical point of view, there were many challenges in making this ground-breaking device easy to use, compact, durable and affordable. In addition, huge effort went into deeply understand the end-users, in this case, doctors and even midwives in rural settings, to develop a design that worked for them, and in their own environment. The user interface and product design had to go through many rounds of ideation and development. Many initial ideas were thrown out and the teams would go back to the drawing board to rethink, refine and retest until we got things right.

How should design improve lives?

Chemistry: Applied as a strategic tool that engages multi-disciplinary teams, design can be employed to solve complex problems that challenge us on a global scale. Through the components of qualitative and empathic design research, concept generation and iterative prototyping and testing, solutions can e found to fundamentally address persistent and urgent issues we face, whether at home or at work.

How might the community or end-user be co-opted into the design process?

Chemistry: Everyone can be creative, but design is ultimately a skill. Designers receive specialised training when they take on a career in the craft of design, whether it is interior, architecture, product, graphics or user-interface. It is important to make this distinction to better understand where the community or end-user plays a role in the design process and when it is the job of the designer to apply their skills and expertise to creating something new.

The best moments to engage with the end-user in the creative process is at the beginning, to deeply understand their needs and walk in their shoes. It is also critical to continuously test ideas with them once the product has been developed by the designer. It is a process of going back and forth between designing and testing, crafting and refining ideas, until the designs really work.

What existing design do you think has a positive impact on society?

Chemistry: The internet has to be one of the most transformative ideas in human history. The most powerful designs act as platforms for the end-user to build on and shape them in their own way. The way the internet is used today probably far exceeds wheat its original designers envisioned.

Not only has this unleashed tremendous creativity that can be found in all of us, but it has also helped shrink our plant. Nothing can be more powerful than having a better understanding of our fellow human beings, whether next door or on the other side of the globe.

As a subset to that, mobile technology in all forms has also allowed us to take this power of connectivity and access to information and ideas out on the rod. we are physical beings, and more than ever before, we are on the move on a global scale. This is what has made our smartphones so pervasive in an extremely short period of time. Solutions like these, that answer to deep and fundamental human needs, are the ones that make the most powerful impact on society.