1. Your Experience Matters
Heather
Welcome
Introductions

2. Your Experience Matters
Understanding the problem
Empathizing with people
Designing solutions
Building out ideas
Testing with people
Heather
Why you did the engagement, what issue were you trying to make better, improve, etc
This Project was rooted in a challenge to improve the experience of people with concurrent disorders moving through mental health and substance use services in the WW area.
How did you recruit patients/families to participate
From within a design thinking framework, that meant that we started with the people who use those services and those who provide programs and supports within those systems.
Street Teams were created – those teams went out to the places were people accessed services
In some cases service providers introduced the street teams to people or arranged the connection ahead of time – the goal was to create a safe way for folks to engage. Language was thought out and a process for folks to change their mind about their “interview” afterward was also created.
We spoke to 150+ people
101 people with concurrent disorders
14 family members and friends of folks with CDs, and
38 service providers
Specifically we completed
- 83 short interviews
- 7 stakeholder labs
- 4 Expert interviews
- 5 Design Labs for ideation
- 1 Testing lab
- 4 one-on-one interviews with family

3. Major Themes
Brooke
All of that research produced this stack of need statements in total – that we sorted into 60 different but highly inter-related themes.
All of this is included in the Challeng2 Brief

4. Personas
Brooke

5. Your Experience Matters
Understanding the problem
Empathizing with people
Designing solutions
Building out ideas
Testing with people
Brooke
- 5 Design Labs for ideation
- 1 Testing lab
- 4 one-on-one interviews with family

6. Major Themes Understand My Problem Support the Supporter
Getting Connected / Finding Information
Concurrent-Oriented System
Treat Me Like a Person
Heather
What were the results, new process, new insights, etc-
60 themes -> 5 major themes, includes input from all stakeholders, not discreet
Understand My Problem — diagnosis (what and why), how to ask for help, kept in the loop, what they can do. Same for family & service providers
Support the Supporter — no training for families and aren’t given permission to access info, supporters need reasonable demands on their time
Getting Connected / Finding Information — need to know where to start, relevant and local knowledge, help getting connected. Same for family & SP
Concurrent-Oriented System — understand CD, get to root causes, transitions, participants nor recipients. This helps family and service providers
Treat Me Like a Person — feel valued and respected, accepted and care about, without stigma. Acknowledge values and preferences

7. Key Learnings You can involve people/families!
Push through the fear of involving people/families and the fear of what they might say
Big difference between what we think we do and what people actually experience
Respect people’s time with compensation
You get better results faster
Design Thinking was a key enabler to us quickly achieving consensus and actually deciding something…while also having fun!
Brooke
What went well
What would you do differently

8. How Does it Feel to Be Engaged?
Barb
How did it feel for patients/families and for providers to engage in this process, or initiative
What were some of the important insights that the users brought to the table that you wouldn’t have landed on without engaging them