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How Design Thinking Can Help Close Gaps in Women’s Health

Dec 11, 2024: Investing in women’s health initiatives is a win-win proposition.

Wicked Design Problem:

Women's health research has been long neglected. How can we use design leadership to change this pattern? What ways can we elevate and prioritize women's health in our society? When will we finally listen to women and care about their pain?

"Despite significant scientific and technological advancements in the past century, major gaps in women’s health remain across multiple dimensions. Women and minority groups were not required to be part of clinical trials until 1993, leading to their exclusion in much of scientific research. For many years, male physiology was considered the default and basis of most modern medicine, often to the detriment of outcomes for women."

[sarahcowgilldesign]

Wicked Design Problem:

Going zero waste to battle climate change. Zero waste living has become popular, but is individual, everyday changes to consumption enough to fight climate change? What role do businesses and corporations have in pollution and environmental destruction? And how can we hold them accountable?

A new report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) provides the clearest and most comprehensive evidence to date of how

[sarahcowgilldesign]

Opal - The #1 Screen Time App

Real Focus in Real-Time. Measure and improve your focus day by day, on iPhone, iPad and macOS.

A great example of innovation and design leadership is the creation of the app, Opal. It is innovative in that instead of trying to keep people on the app and thus their phones longer, their goal is to do the opposite. They confront the issue of digital overload and addiction. The app is built or programmed for tracking the time you spend online. It also provides a way to limit access and time on certain apps and websites. The app diverges from the usual purpose of apps, and instead focuses on helping people become less consumed and reliant on their phones. The app confronts a problem we are just becoming more aware of which is phone addiction which is associated to mental health problems and attention deficiencies. So the design leadership behind this app were not focused on gaining users through normal means, but by proposing a solution to the negative influences of most other apps.

[sarahcowgilldesign]

"The four-year, €60 million (about $65 million) project might seem outlandish to anyone outside of the Netherlands, but it’s business as usual for Dutch cities, which are slowly but methodically transforming personal automobiles into relics of a misguided past — a time when cities were built around the needs of cars, not people."

This bike storage facility project in Amsterdam is a great example of design leadership. Amsterdam is well-known for being a bike-friendly city, but investments in these types of facilities take design leadership. This project was focused on continuing to make the city human-centered not car centered. This means it is focused on improving transportation options including building the infrastructure to support more people biking and walking. It comes from a desire to make cities more livable, decreasing traffic, noise, and pollution. This specific project was about creating something that freed up the street-level space and made bicycle use and storage more efficient and convenient. It's not just about creating the space but making it user friendly with clear signage, easy to use two-level storage, and employees who are there to help users as well as keep the space clean.

Amsterdam’s underwater parking garage fits 7,000 bicycles and zero cars

Would your city spend $65 million for this?