Tactile Tools
A co-design approach for designing new Models of Care across the healthcare industry.
Investigators
- Associate Professor Leah Heiss Monash Art, Design and Architecture
- Dr Marius Foley RMIT University
Undertaken within
The Tactile Tools co-design method, created in collaboration with RMIT University, brought together diverse groups of people to iteratively address complex healthcare challenges and map journeys of care.
The methodology uses a design thinking approach that draws on leading human-centred design research to help industry partners understand their clients from a first-person perspective.
The Tactile Tools physical and digital toolkits offer two different ways to map journeys of care and incorporate the use of personas, co-created with clinicians and lived experience advocates, that encourage groups to empathise with individuals or communities within the workshop.
The physical toolkit comes with a range of acrylic tiles that symbolise goals, roadblocks, workarounds, stakeholders, and moments of empathy that participants use to map journeys of care collaboratively. The digital toolkit uses specially illustrated canvases in the digital whiteboard tool, Miro, to bring together dispersed teams.
The Tactile Tools toolkits have been used in diverse healthcare settings by over 400 people from across eight countries to evolve new models of care for cancer care, low birth weight, eating disorders, aged care, and acquired brain injury. The toolkits also informed the creation of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying guidelines for clinicians.
