Continuum has been collaborating with 826 Boston, a local writing and tutoring center that helps students find their voice. 826 Boston is the seventh chapter of 826 National, founded by best-selling author and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Last week, our friends at 826 Boston, held their annual Spring Benefit. Part of the evening’s festivities included the unveiling our latest collaboration project: A line of posters designed and hand silk-screened by Continuum. Like 826, we believe that communication is important – design is communication and words matter.

Check out this short video, showing the production process and be sure to visit 826 Boston’s online store to get a limited edition poster of your very own.

Words Matter. from Continuum on Vimeo.

When you think of healthcare, most people think about hospitals, nurses and doctors. But increasingly, healthcare is happening outside of hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices. The Medical Development Group hosted a panel on Wednesday night around “The Future of Home Healthcare Products and Devices.” Representing the business perspective, Frank McGillin, the VP of Global Marketing at Philips Healthcare, talked about how increasingly, patients are handling more serious conditions on their own. Even talking about healthcare at “home” is a mistake, with connotations of a little old lady sitting in a rocking chair. As healthcare moves out of the hospital, patients need to go back to living regular lives, and this means healthcare at the beach, in an airport security line and on a mountain. One way to support these diverse needs is by leveraging resources with technology, allowing patients to be monitored and checked wherever they are.
 
David Rose, the CEO of Vitality, and Ben Rubin, the co-founder and CTO of Zeo, shared their viewpoints from a technology perspective. David Rose examined trends he’s seeing as technology is used to enable home healthcare. Highlights included embedding technology for ubiquitous sensing and feedback. Drawing on his experience developing a sleep coach, Ben Rubin discussed the importance of considering how data is shared and presented – the last thing sleep data should do is cause sleep performance anxiety!

Ben Rubin, Zeo and David Rose, Vitality

I finished up the panel by presenting some thoughts on how patients and caregivers feel about managing care at home. They are struggling with the increasing number and complexity of tasks they are being asked to manage. While it is great to imagine a future of careful monitoring and measuring and feedback, this vision must be balanced with the reality that patients and caregivers don’t want to be inundated with data about their health.
 
David Barash, the president of Concord Healthcare Strategies, and the moderator last night, helped frame the discussion from his perspective as a physician, pointing out how overwhelmed many physicians are with the task of monitoring so many patients, but that the new generation of doctors is becoming more comfortable using technology as a tool to support this.

Frank McGillin, Philips and Devorah Klein, Continuum

It was a fun evening, with a large and lively crowd. My only complaint was that we ran short of time, which curtailed discussion. Given that there were some clear points of disagreement that could have ripened into full-blown debate, this is a shame. But it did ensure that no fistfights over, say, the role of cell-phones in home healthcare erupted.

I just attended the “Better World: Accelerating Lab to Market Innovation” conference hosted by MIT’s Enterprise forum. What had me thoroughly entertained—on the edge of my seat, actually—was the unexpected turn in conversation.

I’ve been to enough of these events to know that MIT leans toward the quantitative and analytical side of discussions. And in this case, with speakers like David Berry of Flagship, Alex Pentland, PhD MIT, and Iqbal Quadir of Legatum Center MIT, all indications were pointing to a deep, fact-based, analytical discussion. What happened, however, was entirely different. Our own Devorah Klein and IDEO’s designer Beto Lopez, who were also on the panel, captured the full interest of the audience when they pointed out—in the context of sustainable design—that human interactions can be purposefully designed. When connected to consumer values, human-centered design can inspire and promote behavior change, which, in turn, can encourage early and mass adoption of products and services—consumer, medical, industrial and otherwise.

All the panelists began to build on the point, with David Berry leading the charge. “When it comes to developing Joule, our company that is focused on creating a process to convert solar energy into a liquid fuel,” says Berry, “leveraging design so that we create a user experience that’s readily adopted by consumers is core to our success.” So, while Joule has plenty on its docket—raw science and technology development to name a few big ones—design is deeply embedded in its language and goals.  

The momentum continued, and by mid-way through the panel discussion the conversation was fully focused on the value of design in the innovation process and in creating and building businesses. Along with understanding the economics, technology and market of their business, entrepreneurs are increasingly assigning high value to understanding the functional, social and emotional connections their products make with consumers. The bottom line: Design, in its broadest sense, is becoming a well-accepted strategic tool for business, even in the most technical-based environments and companies.