The Importance of Visual Communication in Healthcare

Hazel White is a designer and a visualizer. She creates simple visuals to help communicate complex ideas. We talk about how design and visualization combine to facilitate thinking, fuel solving, and create transformative change.

Listen to learn about:

>> How visualizations can help us communicate ideas >> Examples of what you can use visualizations for >> Hazel's visualization projects and their impact >> Advice for those wanting to try creating their own visualizations >> Some tools and resources for those who want to create visualizations

Our Guest

Hazel White is a designer and educator who specializes in creating visuals that simplify complex information.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she collaborated with healthcare experts to rapidly distill complex information into simple and memorable visuals for frontline staff in hospitals and care homes.

Currently, she is working on visuals of palliative care guidelines for health and care staff, visually recording a sports governing body's transformation program, and developing internal documentation for a prominent cultural organization.

Previously, Hazel was Founding Director of Open Change - a company which supported organizations to navigate change using Design Thinking. Clients included government, healthcare and national cultural organizations in the UK and Europe.

Hazel spent two decades teaching design in Universities in the UK and South Korea.She is an Associate of the UK Design Council.

Show Highlights

[00:53] Dawan thanks Hazel for the incredible visualization she created for podcast conversation (download it here). [01:46] Hazel's path from design thinking to visualization. [02:13] Discovering that drawing helped her remember things, such as lectures, better. [03:33] Visualizations are helpful for everyone's memory recall. [04:49] Hazel gives one example from the healthcare industry of the powerful impact using visualizations has had on those she's worked with. [08:15] How the pandemic increased the need for getting important information out quickly while also ensuring people understood it. [09:12] Hazel's work on a series of COVID-19 related visualizations for hospital staff. [12:51] The value of using visualizations in a work environment. [13:40] Working on the Scottish Government's Framework for Care for Adults in Care Homes [16:22] Visualizations can be used to capture ideas and themes during live workshops and meetings. [17:22] Using visualizations to map out how things interrelate and to see things changing over time. [18:01] Visualizations can help make complex information more accessible. [19:03] Visuals are something that people will remember. [21:04] How working with visualizations has changed how Hazel thinks and works. [23:50] Creating your own visuals, and when to hire a professional. [26:04] Advice for people who want to give creating visualizations a try, but who aren't "good" at drawing. [27:50] The importance of feedback and collaboration during the creation process. [29:49] The positive feedback Hazel has gotten about her work. [32:37] Dawan gives listeners a visualization challenge. [33:29] Hazel offers tools and resources listeners can use while doing their challenge. [34:51] Drawing visualizations on Magic Whiteboard. [37:35] Thinking about visualizations and accessibility.

Links

Hazel on Twitter Hazel on LinkedIn Hazel White Design Ole Qvist-Sørensen: Draw More, together Magic Whiteboard Scriberia Eva-Lotta Lamm, Sketchnoting: Communicate with Visual Notes

Book Recommendations

Visual Collaboration: A Powerful Toolkit for Improving Meetings, Projects, and Processes, by Loa Baastrup and Ole Qvist-Sørensen

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

A Designer's Journey into Designing for Health and Healthcare with Lorna Ross — DT101 E45 Designing for Healthcare vs Sick Care + The Emergency Design Collective — DT101 E52 Civic Design + Innovation Ops + System Design with Ryann Hoffman — DT101 E62