After peeling 3.5kg of potatoes in just ten minutes for Burns Night, I’m grateful again to Sam Farber, creator of the OXO Good Grips peeler. Motto “Make everyday living easier.”
His wife Betsey had arthritic hands and he saw how hard it was for her to hold a peeler. The new model came after hundreds of design ideas and iterations, but despite being four times the price of its bent metal predecessor, it’s now the choice of millions of able bodied sous-chefs around the world. I would never use anything else.
What’s the connection?
My time with patients on launch day in Hyson Green, Nottingham on Thursday was fascinating. Dozens of languages are spoken among this deprived population, making it one of the most challenging places in the country to deliver high quality primary care. I submit that this is the NHS at its humane best, universal and free at the point of care for the patient in need, whether from UK, EU or anywhere else.
I watched as a Polish man created his login to make a request on behalf of his girlfriend, trying not to “help”, rather to see where there might be the slightest trip or friction. His smartphone is set to translate, but the translate bar covers one of the text windows. He needs to click “Please accept the end user licence agreement” but his fingers are fat and he misses the small checkbox. Why not have a bigger box and shorter text, “Accept the terms”?
Next I sat with a Romanian interpreter, the lady next to her not the patient but her sister, working out how to send a request by proxy, then to be able to arrange a face to face with the interpreter present.
Patient situations are endlessly complex, and we must learn how to do better for all.
It is so much harder to build something simple than something awkward to use, and it is these extreme but everyday situations that drive us continually to fine tune the patient experience.
We’d had the usual comments from the staff that askmyGP would not work for all their patients (most practices tell us why their patients are different and won’t use it). In the event 69% of requests arrived online in week one, higher than our median 63%, and the feedback has been 100% positive.
I hope the title makes sense. Design “for the few, not the many” means everyone’s life is easier.
For the few, not the many
After peeling 3.5kg of potatoes in just ten minutes for Burns Night, I’m grateful again to Sam Farber, creator of the OXO Good Grips peeler. Motto “Make everyday living easier.”
His wife Betsey had arthritic hands and he saw how hard it was for her to hold a peeler. The new model came after hundreds of design ideas and iterations, but despite being four times the price of its bent metal predecessor, it’s now the choice of millions of able bodied sous-chefs around the world. I would never use anything else.
What’s the connection?
My time with patients on launch day in Hyson Green, Nottingham on Thursday was fascinating. Dozens of languages are spoken among this deprived population, making it one of the most challenging places in the country to deliver high quality primary care. I submit that this is the NHS at its humane best, universal and free at the point of care for the patient in need, whether from UK, EU or anywhere else.
I watched as a Polish man created his login to make a request on behalf of his girlfriend, trying not to “help”, rather to see where there might be the slightest trip or friction. His smartphone is set to translate, but the translate bar covers one of the text windows. He needs to click “Please accept the end user licence agreement” but his fingers are fat and he misses the small checkbox. Why not have a bigger box and shorter text, “Accept the terms”?
Next I sat with a Romanian interpreter, the lady next to her not the patient but her sister, working out how to send a request by proxy, then to be able to arrange a face to face with the interpreter present.
Patient situations are endlessly complex, and we must learn how to do better for all.
It is so much harder to build something simple than something awkward to use, and it is these extreme but everyday situations that drive us continually to fine tune the patient experience.
We’d had the usual comments from the staff that askmyGP would not work for all their patients (most practices tell us why their patients are different and won’t use it). In the event 69% of requests arrived online in week one, higher than our median 63%, and the feedback has been 100% positive.
I hope the title makes sense. Design “for the few, not the many” means everyone’s life is easier.
“A man’s a man for a’ that”
Harry Longman
Walk through the askmyGP user story
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