A 2 day training session at a world leading provider of training, educational and products for lifesaving and emergency medical care (Laerdal Medical and Laerdal Global Health – Stavanger, Norway) for product, interaction and service designers. The aim of the training and consultancy session was to enhance design research in the organization. More specifically the goals were to: understand the opportunities of design research within the current research and development efforts in Laerdal; empower the participants to improve their design research practices; analyze the design research methods that designers employ for exploration and documentation; and planning future collaboration.
The sessions were targeted to designers and engineers working in the product development team and to selected staff involved in implementation efforts at user sites. The training included: basics of design research, overview of methods for capturing data from users, methods for analyzing, and for making synthesis of the data collected for design purposes. The training also included hand-on workshop with a joint review of different artefacts currently used in design and user research in the organization. In addition, we have meetings with different groups in order to advance in the implementation of some of the ideas that came up on the first day.
To close the intervention we produced a report mapping the current situation of design research culture within the company, giving ideas for actions points to take in consideration in the near future, and concrete suggestions on possible future activities that they could start to organize tomorrow. The report also included recommendation of favorite books, coming conferences and seminars on design research and design for health.
Recent article in Kuukausiliite on Laerdal
Conducted by Dr. Mariana Salgado (14-15.03.2017)