Memorial Sloane Kettering Behavioral Design
ethnographic research, behavioral insights, organizational design
Team: Anjali Bhalodia, Dani Beecham
Role: research, concept design, facilitation
Overview:
As a behavioral design fellow at Memorial Sloane Kettering, I along with two other fellows were tasked with trying to infuse behavioral insights into the design groups process. Historically, the behavioral insights and design strategy capabilities were siloed, having tried, and failed, to gel in the past.
A key insight that bubbled up through the design research process was that the behavioral science process–linear, methodological and scientific–was almost in direct opposition to the design research process–multi-directional, emergent and creative. Thus a core directive was born:
How might we make behavioral insight knowledge readily available and rapidly deployable for designers?
Process:
Over a 4 month timeline we conducted extensive ethnographic research including –Interviewing and shadowing–the 25 person design team, multiple rounds of prototyping and participatory workshopping.
Participants included the staff behavioral scientist, the creative lead, head of strategy and the entire design group
Result:
Utilizing site specific examples and situated knowledge that had emerged through our research, we created curated behavioral design cards that allowed the MSK Design team to utilize a behavioral lenses throughout their design process.
By utilizing a form familiar to designers, cards + workshop materials, we were able to infuse the behavioral lens naturally into the design groups workflow.
