time flies...

It is already July! I spent the last 3 months reading, interviewing, transcribing andwriting cases. I also wrote a paper with Daniela to ServDes10 Second Nordic Service Design Conference, at Linköping, Sweden. That is an explanation why I didn't post anything in this period.

I can say that this period at Lancaster University was the best opportunity for my thesis development. And English people helped me a lot, sharing information about projects I was studying. Thank you!

phd project

My research project ‘Service Design for Health’ aims at investigating the role of Service Design in the re-design of Primary Care health services, by comparing its contribution within ‘Design in Practice’ (a research project about the new Practice Based Commissioning framework in England) and the Family Health Programmes in Brazil.
The strategy of the Brazilian government to structure its system of primary healthcare (Family Health Strategy - FHS) began as a program of care for families in 1994. This new model of healthcare was delivered through the implementation of multidisciplinary teams attending 40 hours per week. These teams, formed by family physician, nurse, nursing technicians, community health agents, are responsible for monitoring 1.000 families, located in a given geographical area. The teams develop health promotion actions for protection, prevention, recovery, rehabilitation of more frequent diseases and disorders, and in maintaining the health of this community. The main problems that affect Brazilians health are chronic diseases, cancer and also child malnutrition, family planning, and prenatal care.
The FHS has achieved good results, but they still face difficulties in: managing the daily activities of health maintenance with urgency care, engaging the inhabitants to change non-healthy behaviors into healthy ones, and changing attitudes about pregnancy and breastfeeding babies. FHS members showed interest in exploring what strategies and methods Service Design is using to support NHS transformation in its shift toward ‘community care’.

RESEARCH AIMS
- Understand the role, strategies and methods of Service Design in re-designing health services in Primary Care in UK;
- Evaluate the challenges and impact of a selection of service design projects at different levels: service provision, individuals, health organizations, communities and professionals;
- Compare the emerging design strategies and methods with the dominant paradigm of evidence-based design.

Inspiring day: Dott 09 at Bedruthan

On 26th March, I went to this event promoted by Dott09: a one day Design in our Times Think Tank. It was a good opportunity to listen to different experts talking about how design is changing and why it needs to change.
Overall, the discussions were about collaborative design, co-creation, and service design/design methods.

For me (read my thesis) the most interesting thoughts were:

Jeremy Myerson:

- Design practice is changing to a more collaborative way: design with people (co-creation)
- Design is an interdisciplinary practice. Working in an interdisciplinary way will be very important, but there is no interdisciplinary without disciplines. What are the main competences that design discipline (design knowledge) must bring to co-creation teams?

Mat Hunter:

- As design thinking is everyone's new best friend, we have to discuss the different contributions of design thinking (who everyone can held) and design craft/knowledge (specific to designers)
- Design process is not so simple as the way we try to explain it. The more we try to explain the design activity, the more we corrupt our understanding of what design really is

- The picture below was shown in Mat Hunter presentation (sorry, I could not take note of the author of the image, so I'm not really sure about who drew it) to explain how the real design process is.

Inspired in Lauren Tan

I decided to write this blog after listen to an inspiring speech of Lauren Tan at Design PhD Conference: Sustainability, Innovation and Design. Lauren is a Phd Candidate who shared her reflections about the PhD experience with other PhD Candidates. And for me, the most important advise that she gave was the development of communications about PhD. As writing is an ability that needs to be developed, we need to do it everyday (specially for me that am not a English native speaker or writer). She created the blog letters to australia to discuss her PhD topic.
As I'm in UK now and my tutor Vera Damazio is in Rio de Janeiro, I will send my thoughts to her, and to others that can contribute in this journey.
...so lets begin to send Letters to my tutors