Service Design
|
Healthcare
Rethinking home modification services
A service-systems approach for designing home modification for children with complex medical needs.
Service Design
|
Healthcare
|
UX Strategy
Overview
The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Nursing approached the Institute of Design to explore the systemic barriers preventing families of children with medical complexity from making their homes safer and more functional.
Despite a range of programs and resources, the ecosystem remains fragmented leaving families to navigate a complex web of healthcare, funding, and service providers on their own. In response, we designed a service blueprint that reimagines home modification as a coordinated, user-centered experience.
ORGANIZATION
John Hopkins School of Nursing
ROLE
Design Researcher
TEAM
Solo Researcher
DURATION
4 Months (Sept 2024 - Dec 2025)
RESPONISIBILITIES
Journey Mapping, Systems maps, Research Synthesis, Competitor Analysis, Service Blueprint
The Challenge
Despite the clear impact home modifications can have on family well-being, there are limited formal services and data focused on their role in pediatric care.
Who are Children with medical complexity?
Children with medical complexity (CMCs) are a subset have multiple significant chronic health problems, functional limitations, high health care and resource need.
Solution
We designed NestAble, a home modification service that connects caregivers to trusted contractors, funders and vendors for families' unique needs.
Context
Over 3 million children with medical complexity (CMC) in the U.S. rely on their homes for intensive daily care.
The home plays a critical role in caring for children with medical complexity (CMC), functioning simultaneously as a medical site, therapy space, classroom, and refuge. These families are significantly more likely to experience inadequate, stressful living conditions due to accessibility-related barriers that compromise safety, convenience, and wellbeing.
What does this indicate?
Healthcare systems are shifting toward home-based care to reduce burden, but the home environment, and the support systems around it, aren’t designed to keep up.
Understanding the context
Understanding the care ecosystem highlighted hidden challenges families face.
Medicaid's annual renewal cycles
can disrupt service access.
Families are required to renew Medicaid annually, a process that can disrupt continuity of care and delay home-based medical services.
Medicaid benefits widely vary across all the states.
Medicaid home-modification benefits vary widely by state, leading to inconsistencies in access, coverage, eligibility of care services.
Home ownership status is key to accessing modification funds.
In many cases, home ownership is a prerequisite for accessing modification funds, creating barriers for renters and families in unstable housing situations.
Problem Reframe
How might we create a service model for home modifications that accommodates different housing realities and care needs?
User Journey
The current caregiver journey requires families to piece
distinct service with lengthy approval timelines.
Experience Strategy
Grounded in customer pain points and research synthesis,
we developed a service strategy shaped by three key insights.
Home assessment requirements vary depending on the funding sources and eligibility criteria of the funders.
We developed distinct service pathways depending on funding and eligibility requirements. This ensured that families were guided effectively.
Families living in rental homes could only pursue temporary modification after receiving approvals from owners.
This distinction between temporary and permanent modifications prompted us to integrate solutions that allow families to borrow adaptive equipment.
Families prefer contractors who respected their preferences around home aesthetics and function.
This insight led us to build features such as reviews from other caregivers of a contractor, their communication style and job history.
Service Blueprint
Takeaway
Insight 1
Children with medical complexity (CMCs) are a subset have multiple significant chronic health problems, functional limitations, high health care and resource need.
Insight 1
Children with medical complexity (CMCs) are a subset have multiple significant chronic health problems, functional limitations, high health care and resource need.
Insight 1
Children with medical complexity (CMCs) are a subset have multiple significant chronic health problems, functional limitations, high health care and resource need.