When you hear the word “exhibit”, what do you think? Art? History? Museums?

What if you thought of health care?

That’s what Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts did. Blue Cross created Well-B, a three-story innovation center designed for collaboration that will spur change and innovation in health care. It includes a public exhibit space dedicated to starting conversations, hearing stories, and using people’s ideas to move health care forward.

Let’s think about what an exhibit is. It’s a space where a person can experience something, learn something, and if it’s done right, can make a person feel a part of something bigger.

At Well-B, we want you to get all three.

We want you to experience something.We want you to feel like you’re having fun and that you’re talking about a topic you care about. This should give you a sense of fulfillment or interest while you’re inside. And it turns out, most people care a lot about health care. And you should! The exhibit is staffed by associates who want to help you have that experience,

And that brings us to learning — we want to help you understand the health care industry better. It shouldn’t be intimidating or mysterious. It should be accessible. But health care is complex and its problems are complex, too. We feel it’s our duty to shed some light on how it works so you’re more informed and feel more prepared to make health care decisions. While a 700 square foot exhibit can’t explain the whole health care system, we can at least try to explain one piece at a time.

And most importantly, an exhibit is a space where you should feel a part of something bigger. If health care is for all of us, then all of us should have a say in how it works. Blue Cross has broken out of the health care bubble to come directly to you and ask what you want and need. We can bring your ideas and feedback to the rest of our team so we can create and improve programs that work for you.

The current exhibit explores Hospital in the Home, the idea of bringing serious care that would normally happen in the hospital into the home. The exhibit discusses the technology, people, and systems that can make this possible. But the exhibit also asks for your help. Hospital in the Home care has a lot of potential, but there are still a lot of challenges we have to face before we can consider bringing it to you.

We invite you to come visit Well-B. Experience something, learn something, and be a part of the future of health care.

Location: 800 Bolyston St, Back Bay Arcade of the Prudential Center, between MAC Cosmetics and Boston Sports Club. Operating: 10am–5pm, Monday-Friday.

I was recently reminded of a line from an episode of Chef’s Table where the head chef decides to scrap the entire menu one night and create a new one. This confounds his sous chefs! All of the guests on the reservation list for that night had never been to the restaurant, and thus have never tried any of the current menu–for the guests, it’s all new. The chef responds, “well, what about us?”

This line came to mind because we ran a training recently on the approach and the process of human-centered design which went exceptionally well. The group we ran it for said “that was perfect; don’t change a thing.” But being who we are, we scrapped the training and ran something almost entirely new for the next one. That’s the nature of innovation. It’s accepting that, just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be better. Additionally, it means recognizing that being human-centered means taking our needs into account too, not just the needs of those we are designing for. The training was deemed to be perfect, but that didn’t mean that our work was done.

I have encountered this in my personal life, too. I love to cook; one of my favorite dishes to cook is a popular Roman one called pasta alla carbonara. It’s this beautiful, luxurious combination of a few ingredients that I prepare and eat (too) often. Looking at the short ingredient list, one may feel that it’s quite a simple recipe to make:

• Pasta
• Cured pork (traditionally guanciale, though often pancetta or bacon)
• Eggs
• Cheese (traditionally Pecorino Romano)
• Salt
• Black pepper (lots of it)
• Water

The simplicity is deceiving; this dish is quite tricky and requires a bit of finesse to get it really right. A major difficulty in preparing it lies with the eggs. The key is to heat the eggs just long enough to build that rich and delectable sauce that clings so nicely to the pasta, though not to take them too far and scramble them. Why am I describing this to you and making myself hungry? First, because I’m always thinking about food. Second, because I have been making this dish over and over again for the last four years in hopes of attaining the perfect carbonara. Well folks, I am proud to say that I have accomplished my goal.

“But Mike, perfection is unattainable.” Yeah, I thought so too, but that sentiment misses the mark. Perfection is attainable because perfection is subjective. The carbonara I make is the result of dozens of iterations big and small. I worked hard to get my recipe where it is today, and I know that it is perfect (to me at least).

Perfection suggests that the job is done, that there is no more room for improvement. This is a misnomer. Celebrate the perfections you find and enjoy the success of your hard work, but recognize when it’s time for a change and try something new. For now, the job is done, but one of these days I’ll get bored of my carbonara and get back to more iterations. That’s the nature of innovation, and it’s making me hungry…

Last week we said goodbye to our first ever exhibit in the first floor exhibition space. We collaborated with Design Museum Boston to bring attention to a field of health care which sees rapid innovation that improves lives — prosthetics. With our new exhibit, Hospital in the Home, we’re aiming at collaborating radically with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’s most important group: our members!

Our new exhibit, which opened on Thursday, August 29th, takes visitors through the experience of having to determine the right path of care, either for themselves as patients, as doctors/health care providers, or as family members. Having all of these perspectives gives a 360-degree view of the Hospital in the Home experience. Visitors also have the opportunity to construct dioramas of a home where someone would receive hospital treatment, having to sometimes make tough choices between medical supplies and personal items like televisions or couches.

The Hospital in the Home exhibit also features some of the amazing work being ideated in our Well-B space. One of the ideas we showcase, HuCare, combines traditional home furniture and decor with hospital supplies. This could save patients the potential embarrassment of having a home cluttered with medical supplies.

We also highlight our CareBnB initiative, a program which seeks to bridge the gap between hospitals and hospitals in the home. Just because a patient’s home isn’t able to handle hospital-quality treatment, that doesn’t mean a patient has to choose hospitalization. With CareBnB, we seek to link patients with homey facilities that provide the space and care of a hospital but with a greater emphasis on comfort.

Overall, the most important aspect of the new exhibit is our ability to hear from visitors and consumers about how they think the health care process can be made easier for them. Just hours after opening Hospital in the Home, visitors have already come in to share their hospital stories, both good and bad. In the same way that having hospital care in the home makes the medical process less scary, by providing a space for people to talk earnestly about their health care experiences, we remove some of our own inhibitions consumers often feel.

The exhibit space will be open Monday-Friday 10am-5pm. We will soon be extending working hours and offering weekend openings as well. If you have the chance, please stop on by and share your thoughts with us!

So who is Elaine?

When it comes to museum design, our own Innovation Exhibit Manager Elaine Mondy brings the heat — though being from New Mexico, she insists it’s a dry heat. Designing and managing exhibits from the ground up can be a tough job, combining skills from social work, academic research, and museum design. “I collaborate with Blue Cross in order to educate the public about certain health care topics,” Elaine noted, seated on the cold concrete floor of the now-empty exhibit space. Today is move-in day for our newest exhibit, titled Hospital in the Home, the first exhibit to be designed entirely by Well-B. But museum design, like health care, is a two-way street: “We use visitor input and bring it back to Blue Cross to inform our practices.”

Why Well-B?

Originally having started out in the more conventional world of museum studies, first in science then history museums, Elaine was drawn to the opportunity for community engagement offered by Well-B. “I was excited to do something that felt like there would be a direct impact.” Like all of us who get to interact with the public in the first-floor exhibit space, the opportunity to interact with people directly and putting them at the center of the experience is both exciting and somewhat unfamiliar. At the same time, though, encouraging new experiences is at the core of what Well-B does.

Indeed, there is likely no better microcosm of the Well-B experience than in the museum design aspect. Always determined to get started, not get ready, Elaine has never been afraid to take risks in order to find what works best for Well-B. “You’ve got to take risks, have some forward vision and not be afraid to fail and make mistakes.”

When not visioning fowardly…

Elaine can normally be found doing sudoku puzzles. A self-described “certified green chile addict” (though she has yet to brandish her certification) she finds that lots of heat is clearly the spice of life. So if you find yourself walking past a particularly picante poblano, pick up an extra for Elaine!

So who is Marty?

When not managing his work life with his new place in the suburbs, Marty can often be found curled up — literally. Marty is an active participant in the sport of curling, in which he aspires to be a “Vice.” For those not familiar with the sport — as I was before writing this article — the Vice is in charge of strategy and directing the sweepers (the ones with broom sticks). In many ways, Marty sees himself as a Vice for Well-B, coordinating and strategizing our marketing and outreach. Coming from a background in marketing, where he specialized in experiential marketing, Marty said that working with Well-B has been a learning experience where he has the opportunity “to build the brand from scratch [at a] startup where everyone has to do a lot to be successful.”

Of course, Marty’s real job starts when he gets home. A father of 8 month-old Miles, Marty also has to strategize to make sure he grows up happy, healthy, and above all else, a Patriot’s fan. Both at work and at home, Marty does his best to lead by example, saying of Well-B that “we’re pioneers, setting the bar for ourselves and others.”

What does Marty do at Well-B?

A great example of Marty’s pioneering spirit is in his development of our Blue Beginnings program. In Blue Beginnings, we familiarize Blue Cross employees with Well-B’s innovation approach. Building upon his experiential marketing work, he explains the approach with the simplest of tools: some spaghetti and a marshmallow. By building a free-standing structure using only those materials, Marty is able to impart the importance of human-centered design to participants in a way that shows but never tells. “You have to get creative in your approach,” Marty reflected. “What works in this moment might not work in the future. You have to adapt in the moment.”

What does innovation mean to Marty?

When asked what innovation means to him, Marty offered up the example of his garage: There are so many different ways to organize a garage, so you need to start by asking important questions. What do I need? What can be thrown away? Marty said “I’m always trying to reimagine what works best for me. I have a garage, and I’m always continuing to buy stuff and put it in there. I know what my musts are — my cars — but I know there’s a lot of different ways to do it.” Disheveled dwellings aside, Marty is a valued member of our team who continues to work to get the word out there about Well-B. If you see him, make sure to get the details about his garage escapades.

As a professional with more than eleven years of experience in a traditional office setting, the idea of innovationhas been at the core to my development but has had a fairly limited definition.

Until recently, that is.

Spending the last seven months with the Innovation Team at The Well has helped me to gain insights that years of “legacy thinking” hasn’t. I’ve had the opportunity to learn how broad the definition of innovation can be and how my restrained definition created limits and road blocks.

While the process of Human Centered Design underscores everything in The Well, there are two mindsets that I’d like to highlight today.

Don’t get ready, Get started:

Traditional clichés tell us that the hardest part is getting started — but as with many traditional ideas, that’s not always the case. The idea itself is simple: Stop getting in your head, stop shutting down your ideas. Instead, start putting them on paper, and watch the magic happen. Because it will.

For many of us who’ve professionally “grown up” in a traditional office setting, this is contrary to the popular idea of “don’t come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution” and can be a little uncomfortable at first. The traditional line of thinking also puts pressure on one person to come up with a one-size-fits all solution without considering the impact to all potential stakeholders. and is the hardest and most expensive way to solve (potentially) the wrong problem.

The problem with the traditional or legacy thought process, though, is that you often find yourself staring at a blank page. And as any writer will tell you, there’s nothing scarier than a blank page.

Radical Collaboration:

The fear of a blank page is a perfect segue into the idea of radical collaboration: While all employers will benefit from this process, it is particularly useful for large companies with multiple departments who either don’t interact at all or don’t interact in person at least. This often creates the feeling of a siloed environment for employees.

For a large employer, while not all departments work together on a daily basis, their work is guaranteed to overlap in some way. With this siloed effect, it’s easy for a solution that works for department A to create a problem for department B. Without representation of all business areas during the decision-making process, these potential pitfalls will easily be overlooked.

Radical collaboration, however, brings in all potential stakeholders and gives them a voice in the decision-making process.

Almost anyone will benefit from adopting a human centered design approach to solving problems. What we need to keep in mind is that it’s ok if our first idea isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s actually better that way! We should be prioritizing getting ideas on paper, testing them to see if we’re on the right track, getting feedback, and refining our solution.

So, in closing…

Did you know that around 44 million people rely on Medicare every year to get the basic health coverage they need? That’s a whopping 15% of the entire US population! And while Medicare provides coverage — and, most importantly, peace of mind — to millions of people, enrollees have made it clear that there are plenty of areas of improvement which have thus far been ignored: Medicare recipients who depend on home health care do not always receive an adequate amount of attention; accessing behavioral/mental health programs can be challenging if your provider does not offer those services; and navigating the tangled web of bureaucracy just to keep healthy can be confusing and off-putting.

So how can we, as a health care provider, innovate new ways to improve coverage for Medicare recipients?

Last week, teams from all across Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts came together to stoke an answer to this urgent problem. Strategy activation began between our business, consulting, corporate strategy, and innovation departments in order to see how we can ameliorate the struggles people have with home health, behavioral health, and bureaucracy. Alex Connor, one of our own amazing Well-B team members who helped facilitate this event, called this “a huge opportunity to pursue these fields [in order to] solve problems for people with Medicare.”

And this isn’t just talk: the best ideas stoked during this hack session will go on to be instituted in a pilot program. At Well-B, we talk a lot about what it means to get started, not get ready. When it comes to people’s health care, especially vulnerable populations, like the seniors on Medicare, we simply do not have the luxury of time to sit and wait for a solution to fall into our laps. We need to always be pushing the envelope just a little bit further, throwing out the things that don’t work and building up the things that do. We need to bring our enthusiasm, our drive, and our desire to collaborate. People are counting on us to look out for them and we know it. Well-B and Blue Cross are taking that self-awareness seriously and turning it into practical solutions.

“Wow… jeans and a T-shirt… I wish I was in the innovation department,” the freshly-ironed co-worker admitted as we sat down for a meeting. A small remark that spoke volumes to the culture of clothing in the workplace.

Clothing is, at its core, a way to express yourself; But in an office setting not only is that expression limited, it is fundamentally structured so that most people have to purchase clothes solely for work wear. These clothes are often expensive, uncomfortable and, in all honesty, boring. Yet despite this we force ourselves under this business-casual umbrella because we are taught that the storm outside is not safe. If that were the case, why do we still have the urge to dance in the rain? The reality is that your attire may be restricting not only your closet but also the way you collaborate.

There is a reason why famous developers like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and their teams dressed like tired college students: It’s because they let their priorities lie in their ideation, not in their clothes. Having the freedom of choice in attire makes people more comfortable and thus more willing to think outside the box, be more efficient, and feel unconstrained by corporate mentalities of the structured process. They are more willing to share their thoughts and collaborate because they are comfortable both in body and in mind.

This is why when walking into a design studio, the shift to truly “collaborative” attire has already begun. It is there that you will find art directors in Star Wars tees and camo shorts, and photographers dressed to the nines in neon colors and wacky hair styles. Creators know that a tie won’t bring them to the breakthrough they need, so they don’t wear them. Shouldn’t it be the same in an office?

I say it should be.

They say to “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”, but why can’t I dress comfortably? What if the job I want is one where I have a voice but don’t need a suit for it to be heard?

I have always been a problem-solver. It makes sense today; I’m a mechanical engineering student. But it actually goes all the way back to my childhood. In elementary school, I kept a screwdriver, compass, and flashlight in my backpack and brought them with me every day. I was always ready to present a quick, creative solution to any type of challenge. As I learned about the world, both in school and from growing up in Toronto and Boston, I realized that there are myriad problems to be solved and that all of those challenges have real people connected to them. Even as a kid, I was determined to learn about solving insurmountable problems and understand the tools necessary to make a difference in the world.

In my sophomore year of high school, my mom took a job teaching social innovation. For fun, she asked me to help select content for her class. That’s when I found a video about human-centered design.

In three minutes, I felt everything click.

I saw that there was a methodology for connecting social impact to simple solutions for complex challenges. Suddenly, I could label exactly how I was thinking about problem-solving. And I knew what made human-centered design different from other approaches: people. Listening and learning about another person’s experiences is instrumental in creating a solution that truly addresses their needs.

Fast forward to when I started working with the Innovation Team at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts last summer: It was the first time I was able to apply human-centered design to real challenges. In an industry founded on people caring for other people, it makes sense to use human-centered design as a way of thinking and solving problems. Including consumers in every step of the process — testing, learning, and iterating — strengthens our solution to meet their needs. I love that human-centered design is our main tool for problem-solving because it means we are preserving the humanity involved in so many pieces of the healthcare system. It is an opportunity to use empathy to bring meaningful innovations to an industry that must be human-centered in order to function effectively.

Human-centered design is a great model for solving problems anywhere. Not every college student gets to discover it and grow up with it like I did. But as we continue to innovate in an industry that is rapidly changing, isn’t asking for a little more empathy the least we can do? It’s a place to start.

From an outside perspective, did you ever expect designers to take a seat at the table in America’s health care reform?

Before I turned twenty-one, I never remotely considered joining the health care industry. As an up-and-coming designer, hungry for problems to solve, I learned through a college class embedded within Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts that there is a demand for human-centered design in the world of health care understood by few. The lack of user-centered practice in one of the world’s largest industries blew my mind and still does to this day.

Whenever I’m leading a session or a classroom, I prompt the room with the age-old question, “how do we feel about healthcare?” Almost immediately, there’s a shift in excitement allowing people to come together and discuss challenges they face. There’s a massive common ground of individuals who have been wronged by the system that’s supposed to support us in pursuit of a happier, healthier lifestyle for ourselves and our families. I guarantee that any member of your family could tell you a story about a healthcare disparity.

So why are we, designers, invading the industry? A new generation of well-established and adaptable methods are striking down the barriers between people and providers to finally allow transparency. The beauty of implementing creative thinking into a legacy business practice is that as designers, creators and makers, we can use art principals to help bring transparency to those who don’t understand. Art can be driven by pain, but that pain can be portrayed in a new light to convey a message. As designers in the health industry, we take those pains and stories and turn them into something that paves the way for future generations so that these problems become ideas for new journeys in the pursuit of wellness.