Designing with Empathy: How Human-Centered Design Is Transforming Healthcare
Jennifer Baron, Chief Experience Officer, NRC Health
Steve Koch, Managing Partner, Cast & Hue
Imagine walking into a clinic—not as a healthcare executive or provider, but as a patient. You’re anxious, maybe in pain, and unsure what to expect. The waiting room is unfamiliar, the paperwork is confusing, and the interactions feel rushed.
Now imagine that every aspect of that experience, from the waiting room to the follow-up call, is intentionally designed with your emotions, needs, and perspective in mind.
This is the essence of human-centered design: a methodology that prioritizes empathy, inclusion, and real-world insight to create healthcare experiences that truly serve the people they’re meant for.
Rather than relying on assumptions or outdated systems, human-centered design invites us to co-create solutions with the very people we serve. It’s not just about improving processes; it’s about restoring humanity to the core of care delivery.
As healthcare continues to evolve, this approach is proving to be not only more compassionate but also more effective for building trust and fostering long-term relationships.
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Don’t miss our Human-Centered Design pre-conference workshop at Human Understanding Beyond | HUB25 in Orlando this October.
What Is Human-Centered Design in Healthcare?
Human-centered design is a strategic framework for solving problems by deeply understanding the people affected by them. In healthcare, this means designing systems, processes, and experiences that reflect the real needs, emotions, and behaviors of patients and care teams.
The core principle is all about putting the person you’re designing for at the center of all your efforts. That means understanding the problem from that person’s perspective, including them in the problem-solving process, ideating, co-creating solutions, and then testing those solutions with the people you’re designing for.
This approach is especially vital in healthcare, where vulnerability and trust are central to every interaction.
There’s nothing more human than our health. When we can design to really put that human need at the center, we’re going to create better experience and healthier outcomes.
How Human-Centered Design Differs from Process Improvement
While both human-centered design and process improvement aim to improve healthcare outcomes, they start from very different places.
Process improvement focuses on systems and workflows—analyzing, optimizing, and standardizing them for efficiency, consistency, and cost savings.
In contrast, human-centered design begins with people and their lived experiences. It emphasizes empathy, co-creation, and iteration, using tools like journey mapping and design thinking to deeply understand needs and uncover opportunities for meaningful change.
Why Human-Centered Design Matters Now More Than Ever
Healthcare systems today are facing unprecedented challenges—staffing shortages, financial constraints, and rising patient expectations, to name a few. Human-centered design offers a way to navigate these pressures with empathy and efficiency.
Health systems are rich in insights, and layering your patient-survey feedback with a human-centered design approach covers all bases. Simply put, you’re more likely to get it right the first time.
Journey Mapping: A Visual Tool for Real Change
One of the most powerful tools in the human-centered design toolkit is journey mapping—a visual representation of a person’s experience across touchpoints that captures their actions, thoughts, and emotions.
A journey map is a visual representation of how someone travels across the journey, the touchpoints involved, the actions they take, and the emotions they’re feeling. It helps uncover root causes and friction points and provides the confidence that the right problem is being solved, in the right place and from the patient’s perspective.
Unlike spreadsheets or dashboards, journey maps are immersive and intuitive, and they can be printed, displayed, and used as collaborative tools across teams.
Real-World Impact: Stories from the Field
When applied thoughtfully, human-centered design has the power to shift mindsets, uncover blind spots, and accelerate problem-solving in ways that traditional approaches often miss.
At one health system, the journey began with a simple but powerful exercise: asking leaders to observe their own waiting rooms. What they discovered was eye-opening. One Chief Nursing Officer reflected, “I had no idea what actually happens in the waiting room.” That moment of realization, sparked by direct observation, transformed how the team approached the issue. By stepping into the patient’s shoes, leaders were able to identify friction points more clearly and arrive at a solution more quickly and collaboratively.
A similar breakthrough occurred during a human-centered design workshop focused on urgent care. A provider shared how she had been treating a common eye condition—something she had seen hundreds of times—with clinical efficiency. But through the workshop, she realized that for the patient, it was a first-time experience filled with fear and uncertainty. That insight prompted her to rethink how she communicates and connects with patients, especially in moments of vulnerability.
These stories underscore a central truth: human-centered design helps healthcare professionals reconnect with the human side of care. It fosters empathy, encourages active listening, and creates space for more meaningful communication, all of which are essential for building trust and improving outcomes.
Building Trust Through Design
Trust is one of the most critical, and fragile, elements in healthcare. It’s not something that can be assumed or standardized. Instead, it must be cultivated intentionally, with a deep understanding of what patients value and need in their care experiences.
Human-centered design offers a path to build that trust authentically by grounding decisions in the lived experiences of patients and care teams.
Too often, healthcare organizations implement programs with the best intentions, only to leave them untouched for decades. While these initiatives may have once been effective, they often fail to evolve alongside patient expectations.
Human-centered design challenges that inertia. It encourages continuous listening, learning, and adapting, ensuring that solutions remain relevant and responsive over time.
By involving patients directly in the design process through design thinking, organizations can move beyond assumptions and create experiences that feel personal, respectful, and trustworthy.
This approach not only improves satisfaction but also strengthens the relationships that are essential to delivering effective, compassionate care.
Efficiency, Equity, and Innovation
While empathy is at the heart of human-centered design, the approach also delivers tangible operational benefits. In today’s healthcare environment, where resources are stretched and teams are under pressure, efficiency is more than a goal—it’s a necessity.
Human-centered design helps organizations streamline their efforts by focusing on what truly matters to patients and care teams. By involving stakeholders early and often, teams can reduce the need for costly rework and avoid solutions that miss the mark.
This approach also supports equity by amplifying voices that are often underrepresented in traditional feedback channels. Many patient populations are difficult to reach through surveys alone, but human-centered design methods, such as journey mapping and ethnographic research, offer alternative ways to engage them.
These tools help uncover nuanced insights that might otherwise go unnoticed, ensuring that solutions are inclusive and responsive to a broader range of needs.
From Insight to Innovation
Human-centered design doesn’t stop at identifying problems—it’s a springboard for innovation. Tools like journey mapping provide a clear, visual understanding of the patient experience, revealing both pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Once these insights are gathered, they can be brought back to cross-functional teams and senior leaders to inform ideation, prototyping, and testing.
This process often uncovers unmet needs: gaps in care or communication that patients experience but organizations may not be aware of. When these needs are addressed thoughtfully, they can lead to breakthrough innovations that not only improve care but also differentiate the organization in a competitive landscape.
Human-centered design ensures that these innovations are grounded in real-world experiences, increasing the likelihood of adoption and long-term success.
Getting Started: Small Steps, Big Impact
One of the most empowering aspects of human-centered design is that it doesn’t require a massive investment to begin.
In fact, some of the most impactful insights come from simple actions: sitting in a waiting room, observing interactions, talking to patients, and listening without an agenda. These small steps can spark big shifts in perspective.
For those looking to deepen their understanding, attending a workshop, or exploring available tools can provide a solid foundation.
Whether you’re a healthcare executive, clinician, or frontline staff member, embracing human-centered design is about adopting a mindset—one that values curiosity, empathy, and continuous learning.
By starting small and staying focused on the people you serve, you can begin to create more meaningful, efficient, and equitable healthcare experiences.
Join us at Human Understanding Beyond | HUB25
If you want tools to take back to your own organization, register for the pre-conference workshop Design Like a Human: An Interactive Journey into Human-Centered Thinking at NRC Health’s Human Understanding Beyond | HUB25 conference in Orlando this October. Learn more and save your spot today!
