Technological solutions in the health care sector mostly result from the characteristics of the medical care of a particular country and are subjected to legal, social and political influences. Designing complex systems requires methods to help designers understand the scope of challenge, define its areas and offer the best possible solution.
Switzerland is a country with a unique health care organisation, mainly based on the non-governmental Spitex entities (Spitalexterne Hilfe und Pflege). By design, this system is founded on community care and work of nurses, who often assume the roles of managers, assistants, “messengers” between patients and their families, doctors and the hospital. Such a specific situation makes the popular methods hardly applicable and requires a particular approach in the design process.
This article discusses the design of an e-service for the Swiss health care indicating the areas problematic from the designer’s perspective and trying to answer the question of how to adapt the design process to such a specific challenge.
Keywords: user experience, service design, health care, standardisation, agile