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Your round-up of design thinking news and opportunities, to improve your practice.

Welcome to Design Thoughts! I’m Charlotte, a freelance service designer. This newsletter is a round-up of thoughts, news and opportunities.

3 ways to create better health services

Start at the end: health outcomes

The most important thing when designing a health service is the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. The intended outcome doesn't have to be a health outcome. You could be trying to improve health literacy, or you could be improving efficiency of an existing service. No matter what the intended outcome is, it’s important to discuss it with your team, have it written down in your logic model or theory of change. A logic model or theory of change simply states: This is the intervention > This is what we hope to achieve.

When you know the outcome, you should also assign indicators to the outcome. For instance, we’re doing a mental health workshop to improve mental health literacy. As a baseline, participants could be asked: ‘On a scale of one-to-ten, how confident do you feel about speaking to a friend about mental health?’. After the intervention they could be asked the same thing. Each indicator tells you something about the progress you’re making, and allows you to make changes.

Understand people’s level of activation

This is all about meeting people where they’re at. A good example is how low people’s motivation is when they’re depressed. When you’re depressed you are in need of mental health support, but you’re in the worst place to access it. For this reason, people need a service where they can reach a counsellor via text message.

I volunteered for Shout crisis text line as a counsellor. I found people could send a text, but they often weren’t ready for the next step in mental health support. They might not be ready for something like group therapy for a long time. Sports people with injuries have high activation and motivation. Therefore, things like videos that allow them to do physiotherapy at home are suitable.

Specific services to tackle health inequalities

Health inequalities arise because we live in an unequal world. In the UK, people in the LGBTQIA+ community are much more likely to have mental health issues. This is not because being LGBT+ is stressful within itself. It’s because in our community we’re much more likely to face: stigma, discrimination, leading to things like lack of jobs and poor housing.

Me and my cofounders created Kalda, the LGBTQIA+ mental health app. We wanted to tackle this health inequality. Services which are targeted and designed with care, love and sensitivity are important. It also takes people with lived-experience in power to tackle health inequalities. As well as excellent universal healthcare.

In the news

• Lady Phyll, the cofounder of UK Black Pride is featured in British Vogue, along with other LGBT+ activists. Beautiful read. Source​
• Eating disorder helpline disables chatbot for 'Harmful' responses after firing human staff. Source​
• People are spending more of their wages on rent than at any other time in the last 10 years. Source​

Opportunities

Development Director, Split Banana

They provide Relationship and Sex Education. This role involves leading sales, partnerships and programme coordination at Split Banana.

Salary: £31,000-33,000 / 4 days a week / Annual

​Apply here​

Marketing and Communications Manager, Split Banana

This role involves leading marketing Split Banana’s services and communicating with our community via social media and other channels.

Salary: £27,000-29,000 Annual, pro rata, so half for this part-time role / 2 days a week

​Apply here​

Service Designer, NHS Blood and Transplant

Salary: £50,952 to £57,349 / 5 days a week / Annual

​Apply here​

Assistant Service Designer, Marine Management Organisation

Salary: £37,062 / 5 days a week / Annual

​Apply here​

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