We're Here for the Humans
Summary
In this talk, Schwartz shares the transformative journey of embedding empathy-led design within GE Healthcare, a $19 billion division with 55,000 employees working in 200 countries. Drawing on personal stories, including his mother’s experience as an Alzheimer's caregiver, he emphasizes reminding teams of the human purpose behind their work. Schwartz highlights the challenge of bridging cultural and language differences, such as varying understandings of concepts like 'insight' and 'innovation' within global teams. He describes the struggle to elevate design from a back-of-house creative resource to a strategic partner influencing organic growth and business outcomes. Schwartz outlines key strategies including teaching empathy internally, using storytelling and immersive experiences like a hero’s journey with company leaders, and recruiting allies outside design to scale impact. He underscores the importance of understanding diverse healthcare contexts globally—from resource-limited maternity clinics in India to socially sensitive environments in Saudi Arabia. Schwartz recounts innovative examples like transforming pediatric MRI anxiety through storytelling and reducing sedation rates at Pittsburgh Medical Center, and using patient-driven customization in mammography experiences. He stresses that designers must engage as business-savvy partners fluent in leadership language to thrive. Schwartz closes by reflecting on historic design thinking principles from Edison’s labs, and the ongoing challenge to make design integral to GE’s DNA, advocating for legacy building through empathy, strategic influence, and broad collaboration.
Key Insights
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Empathy and personal stories are crucial tools to reconnect large, technical organizations with their deeper mission in healthcare.
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Global healthcare design must reflect vast cultural, social, and economic differences to be truly effective.
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Design in large companies often starts as a marginalized creative resource and requires deliberate effort to become a strategic partner.
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Language and cultural differences (e.g., understanding of terms like 'insight' and 'innovation') pose real challenges in multinational design teams.
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Creating immersive, experiential storytelling (such as a CEO’s hero’s journey) can breakthrough corporate skepticism toward design.
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Design impact scales by recruiting and coaching non-designers rather than trying to control all engineers or employees.
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Healthcare innovation benefits from borrowing lessons and empathy exercises from outside healthcare, including household product design and crisis responder experiences.
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Reducing anxiety for pediatric patients through themed environments and storytelling can dramatically improve clinical outcomes and reduce sedation.
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Designers must learn to communicate fluently in business terms to gain leadership trust and influence.
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Preserving and revisiting design journey maps and legacy documentation helps track progress and set future aspirations.
Notable Quotes
"This is us. This is all of us in this room. That could be your mom or your son or your daughter or you that have been through that."
"We didn’t do this with arrogance. We did it with great respect, understanding who we’re delivering to, shareholders, patients, customers."
"In order to do this kind of work, you have to be willing to take a bloody nose. Those bloody noses are badges of honor."
"We found that depending on what culture you’re in, words like insight and innovation can be very hard to translate."
"Find somebody else with a really big problem and go solve it for them using your tools. Don’t even talk about what design is."
"We have to meet them where they are. Designers need to learn the language of business. That’s a very, very important lesson."
"If you can crack the code on making a child and their parents more comfortable in healthcare, you can map those principles to adults."
"She wants a small sachet she can buy every few days for a few pesos. What she really wants is to recapture time."
"We are map makers… helping businesses understand their customers so they don’t make the wrong decisions or end up somewhere they don’t want to be."
"It’s all about being subversive with goodness in your heart."
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