So to give you a sense of what reframing looks like on the live challenge, I'm going to share with you a somewhat legendary or well known story in the design thinking community. So this is Doug Dietz, he's an innovation architect at GE Healthcare and also a fellow at the Stanford D School. And so for many decades, he's been designing MRI machines. These are magnetic resonance imaging machines that take pictures of your internal structures and soft issue. And so he was challenged with the following, how might we make MRIs more efficient in a way that we can actually help hospitals save money and streamline throughput for these departments? And so he just happened to be on site one day and he noticed a young child coming to get an MRI scan. And as he's walking with, the young child was walking with his parent, he noticed as he got closer and closer, he got more and more anxious, up to a point that the child was like in tears beside himself, he was so fearful. And so one of the things you need to know about MRIs is that you have to remain immobile. If you shake or you fidget, the image is blurred and you have to start all over again. And so for children who aren't compliant, you have to strap them down. And so here is a picture where we actually have the child is braced. And usually what happens is that the child actually becomes much more traumatized, and so they can't remain still. And in that case you have to bring in anesthesiologist to actually sedate the child. And as we all know, that can cause complications here, allergic reactions. Again, it becomes a much more long and drawn out and risky process. And so Doug was incredibly moved by what he saw, he had built in an order amount of empathy for this child, and said, listen, if this is how our customers are experiencing this, we have to do better. We have to think differently about this entire experience, because ultimately, as we know, or actually what he found out was that, the anesthesia rate for children under 9 is upwards of 80%, and so this is what we're dealing with here. And so when he kind of continued on his empathy research, he asked children like, what are some of these things that you see inside of the MRI division? What do they mean to you? And so one of the topics that came up was the spinal board. And this is the board with which sits beside the MRI machine, and when you reach in to brace them, they bring it out for the child. And the children described as that's the board they carry dead people out on. So imagine that is that they could probably think that that might be them. And so they had to said, well, how do we rethink this whole experience? We're in a child's world and from their perspective, do they actually perhaps line up to get on these machines in their daily life? And so what are the answers they came up with was, amusement parks. And so the reframe was is that, how might we make the MRI experience more fun? Similar to what you would see at Disney World, and so they brought in all these creative designers, those who had designed amusement parks and brought those cues and inspirations to the actual experience. They generate different ideas and prototype different solutions, and this is what they came up with. So this is the GE Adventureland series for MRIs and CT scanners. And so at face value it looks like some really childlike and colorful stickers slapped on machine. Yes, but actually there's a story involved or any experience built around what they've created here. And so when a child is actually indicated for an MRI procedure by the doctor, the doctor gives it a little story book or a package to the mother or father, it's either the Pirates Mermaid Experience or the Space Adventure. And so each night, the parent will read the child, the space story and they'll practice remaining still. And so on the day of the actual procedure, the child will follow the little spaceman footsteps and down when they reached the MRI wing, the technician will be dressed in space garb. They'll be put on the platform and when it start time to scan, the technician will actually tell the child and say listen, little Jimmy little aliens are going to spin around on that little scanner. And when you get up to 50 aliens, you win the adventure and you win a prize, and so here's what happens. So as a result of a child being much more engaged in compliance, the efficiency of the machine is actually much more streamlined, utilization rates go up and so you save an operating costs. And the real happy story is that because the child is engaged to remain still throughout, sedation rates go from 80% all the way down to 15. And when you listen to Doug tell the story, he's like really that's all great and all, but really, is that you actually create a happy customer. And he's heard stories where actual patients or little children go to their parents and say can we come back tomorrow? Obviously, we know this is a really stressful experience and the answer is usually no, but at least he realized that he's made peoples lives that much better. And so that's the power of bringing empathy to your work everyday.
