Introduction
Design can deliver innovative solutions to issues in the medical field, including increased patient experiences, clinical outcomes, reduced staff work hours and cost savings (Altman, Huang and Breland, Reference Altman, Huang and Breland2018; Lamé et al., Reference Lamé2023). Design thinking (Brown, Reference Brown2008), a systematic method of the designers’ thinking processes, has been applied to develop medical devices (Carroll and Richardson, Reference Carroll and Richardson2016; Hou et al., Reference Hou2020) and hospital management systems (Chanpuypetch and Kritchanchai, Reference Chanpuypetch and Kritchanchai2020). In the Netherlands, there is a university medical center where design thinking is being applied to the development of new care models in all departments (Edelman et al., Reference Edelman2017).
Since 2009, design education for medical students, healthcare professionals, patients and educational development has been reported (Cahn et al., Reference Cahn2016; McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019; Ferreira, Savoy and Markey, Reference Ferreira, Savoy and Markey2020; Madson, Reference Madson2021). A well-known example is the Biodesign Project by Stanford University, which provides design education to graduate students and fellows focusing on biomedical engineering and entrepreneurial aspirations. Over the past 20 years, it has achieved great success in medical device development, entrepreneurship and fundraising (Augustin et al., Reference Augustin2020). Furthermore, in 2019, a qualitative review of design thinking in health professions education reported 15 programs and described a wide range of effects of using design thinking, including fostering self-efficacy and confidence and participant experiences and providing solutions to specific problems (McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019). In the Netherlands, a one-semester course called Haking Healthcare was created for medical and art students from multiple universities, as well as participants from interdisciplinary fields such as psychology and neuroscience (Van De Grift and Kroeze, Reference Van De Grift and Kroeze2016). Participants used design thinking to generate a variety of unconventional ideas for patient-centered healthcare, suggesting the positive impact of this type of interdisciplinary design thinking education on medical education. Students and staff from fields of medicine and design participating in educational programs are expected to improve their minds, motivation and skills related to creativity by experiencing and discussing medical field problems and proposing and testing solutions. Moreover, the ideas generated for clinical problems are expected to produce tangible outputs leading to practical solutions. However, there are limited numbers of reports on on-campus education bringing together students and faculty from the fields of medicine and design. Moreover, the evaluation of the creativity of the ideas generated and the educational effects on participants remain unclear. In addition, many previous studies are based on educational programs in a single medical sub-specialty, and knowledge is limited regarding the framework and effectiveness across various disciplines within medical and design fields in a single university. Especially in Japan, only a limited number of universities have both medical and design faculty, and there are few examples of such programs in university education. Therefore, this study focused on examining how educational programs linking the various sub-fields of medicine and design at university institutions can be implemented and what outcomes they produce.
Aim
In this study, we analyzed the results of an educational program implemented at Kyushu University, in which graduate students who had acquired practical skills in problem-finding and idea proposal to a certain level collaborated with medical staff at the same university to realize and solve problems in various fields of medicine. In this article, we clarify the creativity of ideas generated during consecutive two one-year programs and examine the influence of motivation and skills on the participants’ creativity. Finally, based on this experience, we propose a framework for an educational program that integrates medicine and design within one university.
Significance
The significance of this study derived from an educational program in collaboration with both the medicine and design faculty at a single university in Japan is as follows:
-
- We identified the impact of this program on creativity based on the quality of ideas and participant evaluations.
-
- We proposed a framework for implementing a problem-solving educational program that links a wide range of sub-disciplines in both medicine and design at one university.
Literature review
Design is recognized as an interdisciplinary method in both academia and practice (Papalambros, Reference Papalambros2015; Ryu and Kim, Reference Ryu and Kim2022; Ruiz and Wever, Reference Ruiz and Wever2024). McLaughlin et al. qualitatively reviewed (McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019) 15 reports on education programs for medical professionals using design thinking, some of which involved collaborations with various professions such as nurses, technicians as well as physicians. However, the majority of the education programs reported here were on a single medical specialty or theme, with limited ones provided on multiple medical specialties. Regarding practical education using design-based methods in various medical fields, the Biodesign project initiated by Stanford University has achieved considerable results in the development of medical devices, entrepreneurship and fundraising over the past 20 years (Augustin et al., Reference Augustin2020). Educational programs linking medicine and design can educate students who do not necessarily aspire to become entrepreneurs. However, especially in Japan, only a limited number of universities have both a medicine and a design faculty, and there are few examples of such programs in university education.
This study focused on what outcomes an educational program integrating various fields of medicine and design at a university institution could produce. In both design education and medical education contexts, the educational benefits of design thinking are associated with creativity and innovation (Sauder and Jin, Reference Sauder and Jin2016; Madson, Reference Madson2021). Creativity is also evaluated in various contexts and is recognized in engineering design for its novelty and appropriateness (Miller et al., Reference Miller2021). Dean et al. (Dean et al., Reference Dean2006) surveyed 90 studies on creativity and identified its four main components: novelty, workability, relevance and specificity. Specificity was the least used component, appearing in only 10% of the previous studies. Boudier et al. (Boudier et al., Reference Boudier2023) also revealed six types of reasoning related to the evaluation of ideas, including “discovering six a new path” and “searching for other alternatives.” Montagna and Cantamessa (Montagna and Cantamessa, Reference Montagna and Cantamessa2019) described the relationship between design and innovation based on structuring the conceptual connections between the important and widely accepted literature on innovation management and the literature on engineering design. The main observed trend is “flexibility” – the digitalization of services and physical deliverables and flexible manufacturing systems such as additive manufacturing. Based on a case study of innovative aerospace design, Kroll and Farbman (Kroll and Farbman, Reference Kroll and Farbman2016) proposed a common conceptual design methodology called “parameter analysis,” contributing to the creation of innovative ideas.
Evaluation criteria for design thinking have also been developed. Blizzard et al. (Blizzard et al., Reference Blizzard2015) developed an earlier scale comprising five elements of the design thinking mindset: “feedback seekers,” “integrative thinking,” “optimism,” “experimentalism” and “collaboration.” They surveyed 6,772 individuals in the USA. college students. Since then, scales measuring design thinking mindset have been developed in the fields of business engineering field (Roth et al., Reference Roth2020), higher education (Vignoli, Dosi and Balboni, Reference Vignoli, Dosi and Balboni2023) and teaching (Cai and Yang, Reference Cai and Yang2023). However, in the medical education context, evaluation indicators used are not necessarily related to design thinking, but rather self-efficacy, change or expansion of perception and solutions to specific problems (McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019). Design thinking is also said to foster an entrepreneurial spirit, which may influence interest in working in the medical field and career choices (Holm, Reuterswärd and Nyotumba, Reference Holm, Reuterswärd and Nyotumba2019; Kremel and Wetter-Edman, Reference Kremel and Wetter-Edman2019; Arendt, Reference Christensen and Arendt2023). Furthermore, a study synthesized three current cross-disciplinary understandings of design thinking in medical education—a cognitive style, a process of creativity and innovation, and an organizational attribute (Madson, Reference Madson2021).
Methods
This educational program was conducted as an annual project-based lecture course (once a week, 90 minutes × 2 sessions) taught by four faculty members at Kyushu University Faculty of Design and Hospital. Three members, who specialized in design thinking, product design and digital games, belonged to the Faculty of Design. One member, who specialized in telemedicine engineering and design to support collaboration between faculties and participants, was from the university hospital. This lecture was held as one of the design educational programs for students at the Graduate School of Design and the Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences. Among the medical students, we solicited volunteer participants by email and flyers sent to each medical department at the university hospital. At that time, we presented the purpose of the class and what they should prepare for (Figure 1). The objective of the lecture was defined as being “able to create and demonstrate specific solutions to problems in the medical field by understanding the process of problem finding and solution in design.” Twenty-two students from the Graduate School of Design and five from the Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences participated in the class, respectively. Eight graduate students (doctoral students) and researchers from the Surgery, Oral Surgery, Neurology and Nursing departments at the Graduate School of Medicine and Hospital joined voluntarily (Table 1). Because the design, medical and other general education departments are located on separate campuses at Kyushu University, a chat communication system for participants and faculty members was established using Slack. Table 2 shows the class schedule workflow designed using the method provided in the review paper by Simon (Reference Simon1970) through the following steps: 1. medical site visit, 2. identifying problems, 3. creating ideas, 4. idea selection, 5. prototype creation and 6. demonstration. In the first semester, medical participants explained problems to their counterparts in the design field during a medical site visit. A workshop was held to identify problems and create ideas using the Kawakita-Jiro (KJ) method (Nakagawa et al., Reference Nakagawa2015; Shimizu et al., Reference Shimizu2021). Subsequently, ideas were created using images, and each group selected an idea and created a prototype. In the second semester, the participants updated, demonstrated and reviewed prototypes. In the final presentation, all participants and faculty members evaluated each idea. The workshops were conducted on-site using sticky notes to identify issues and online using Miro to organize issues and create ideas. All sticky notes and images were recorded. The number of issues and ideas was analyzed by counting the data from sticky notes and images in Miro.
Figure 1. Flyers were distributed at the university hospital.
Table 1. Participant characteristics
Table 2. Class schedule
The program was evaluated based on the creativity of ideas generated and educational outcomes (Table 3). To evaluate the creativity of ideas, we used the three most commonly used elements of creativity proposed by Dean et al. (Dean et al., Reference Dean2006); novelty, workability and relevance. For each element, participants were given a short description, such as “It is a new idea that breaks preconceptions (novelty),” “It is highly feasible (workability),” “It offers a high degree of improvement over existing methods (relevance)” and were asked to rate the idea on a five-point Likert scale from “1: strongly disagree” to “5: strongly agree.” Regarding educational outcomes, all four faculty members set items related to the criteria by reviewing the research on design education in general (Blizzard et al., Reference Blizzard2015; Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli, Reference Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli2018; Coleman et al., Reference Coleman2020), design education in the medical field (Cahn et al., Reference Cahn2016; Roberts et al., Reference Roberts2016; Altman, Huang and Breland, Reference Altman, Huang and Breland2018; Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli, Reference Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli2018; Deitte and Omary, Reference Deitte and Omary2019; McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019; Ferreira, Savoy and Markey, Reference Ferreira, Savoy and Markey2020; Hou et al., Reference Hou2020; Madson, Reference Madson2021) and using design thinking for creativity education (Razzouk and Shute, Reference Razzouk and Shute2012; Kijima, Yang-Yoshihara and Maekawa, Reference Kijima, Yang-Yoshihara and Maekawa2021). Finally, 14 items were established and grouped into categories of “creative mindset and motivation,” “skills for creativity” and “expectations for careers linking medicine and design.” During the self-assessment, participants evaluated themselves before and after the lecture using a five-point Likert scale. In addition, we enquired about the benefits and improvements of the educational program and solicited comments in an open-ended format in Japanese. Comments were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, Reference Braun and Clarke2006), and the results of the analysis were translated into English. Two authors (K and T) made summary memos performed coding and then discussed and agreed on the theme. In the instructor assessment, two faculty members (A and B raters) evaluated participants after the lecture regarding “skills for creativity.” Microsoft Excel 2019 and IBM SPSS® Statistics 28.0.1.0 (142) were used for statistical analysis. The weighted kappa coefficient was used as the agreement between the two raters in the assessment by faculty (Fleiss and Cohen, Reference Fleiss and Cohen1973). In the self-assessment, Cohen’s d (Cohen, Reference Cohen1988) was calculated as the amount of effect before and after the lecture using the major items. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for each item of the pre- and post-lecture assessments, with a significance level of 5%. The Ethics Committee of Kyushu University Hospital (No. 22288–00) reviewed and approved the study protocol for the “Design study of an oral examination table for infants and toddlers.”
Table 3. Evaluating items and timing
Results
Finding problems and quality of ideas
Medical participants presented the following issues: Nurses have raised the issue of preparation time and services when washing inpatients’ hair. Oral surgeons presented issues in pediatric care, such as challenges regarding immobilization during infant care and difficulty in achieving language training at home for pediatric patients. From the general surgery viewpoint, the need to design waiting rooms for patients and quality of life (QoL) issues for patients with intestinal stomas were highlighted. From the neurological perspective, QoL issues for patients with neurological diseases were raised. In total, 424 problems and findings were identified, and 387 ideas were created regarding the six themes (Table 4). Between one and four prototypes were produced for all themes except the general surgery waiting room. Table 5 shows nine prototypes with mock-ups and functional models of products, games or service designs. Six ideas were product-related, and most of them were modeled in three-dimensional computer graphics (3DCG), whereas mock-ups were made with a 3D printer. The product in Figure 2 is made by combining block shapes to organize the wiring for in-hospital patients, and the design employs the materials used in the 3D printer. Two were rehabilitation training games, and a developed working model reflected images according to the input of a camera, microphone, and remote controller. Figure 3 shows a mouth training game for children after oral surgery, which uses soap bubbles as an image. The microphone used in the game is modeled after a tool for making soap bubbles and was created with a 3D printer.
Table 4. Number of problems and ideas
Table 5. Evaluation of prototypes
IQR, Interquartile range; 3DCG, three-dimensional computer graphics.
Figure 2. Prototype of a wiring support product for hospital beds.
Figure 3. Prototype of speech therapy games for children.
The majority of participants rated each idea with a median of 4 for novelty, with the neurology wiring support product and the writing support product receiving a median of 5. For workability, most ideas received a median of 4, with the oral surgery speech therapy game and documentation for patients with intestinal stomas receiving a median of 5 and the oral surgery infant chair product receiving a median of 3. For relevance, the wiring product was highly rated at 5, with the rest receiving a median of 4. Overall, the information design for patients with intestinal stomas and the wiring product were highly rated at 4.3. The values for each indicator were 4.0 for novelty, 4.1 for workability and 4.1 for relevance, respectively (Table 5).
Participant self-assessment
Table 6 shows the self-assessment for each evaluation item. Only the item “Desire for future work related to medicine and design” increased significantly after the class. All four items in the “creativity minds and motivation” category had a median value of 4 or higher in the pre-class assessment, and three items had a maximum value of 5. In the category “skills for creativity,” five of the eight items had a median value of 4 in the pre-class assessment. The effect size for each category in the self-assessment was medium to large (d = 0.65) for “expectations for careers linking medicine and design,” medium (d = 0.52) for “skills for creativity” and low to medium (d = 0.42) for “creativity minds and motivation.”
Table 6. Self-assessment
IQR, Interquartile range; *P < 0.05
Assessment by faculty
In the creativity skills assessment by faculty, both A and B raters granted a median score of 4 or higher. In particular, “Able to work proactively on problems that do not have clear solutions,” “Able to share work with others before it reaches the personal satisfaction level” and “Able to express ideas quickly through sketches, models, etc” achieved a mean score of 4.5. In contrast, agreement between the two raters was low for most items (5/8). The lowest was for “Uncover users’ potential needs and essential problems from unique perspectives (K = 0.01)” and moderate for the item “Able to express ideas quickly through sketches, models, etc.” (K = 0.59) (Table 7).
Table 7. Assessment by faculty
IQR, Interquartile range
Thematic analysis
Thematic analysis of the open-ended comments revealed the benefits and improvements of this lecture (Figure 4). The positive aspects of this program were the opportunity to hear from medical professionals and patients (12 comments), gain new perspectives (5), learn comprehensively about creation (3), collaborate with graduate students in other fields to create things (3) and have the outputs evaluated by people in the medical field (2). Participants from the medical field were satisfied with multiple perspectives (Medical doctor, A) and learning about the manufacturing process (Medical doctor, B). Design participants stated that working on issues in healthcare while engaging with stakeholders was valuable, useful and rewarding (Design student, B).
Figure 4. Summary of thematic analysis.
Improvements included taking more production time outside class hours. This involved improving the time and systems required for the university to procure materials (9 comments), the program structure, such as by involving nurses, medical staff and physicians (6), and communication issues between medical and design participants in hospital access, which was restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic (4). Design participants mentioned that they had to work overtime for a project and wanted to be in charge of more ideas (Design student, C) and that they also desired a roadmap to the actual commercialization of the product (Design student, D). The problem related to the time lag between placing and receiving an order and the ordering system was also mentioned (Design students, E and F). A participant from the medical field expressed that access to hospitals was difficult due to the pandemic, and the ease of infection situation would improve access in the future (Medical doctor, A).
Discussion
Finding problems and quality of ideas
The collaborative educational project between medicine and design involved four medical disciplines of general surgery, oral surgery, neurology and nursing for a two-year period. As a result, 424 problems were identified, 387 ideas were generated, and nine prototypes were created for product, service and game design mock-ups and working models. In the first year, we conducted the project with three medical departments; however, we were unable to create a prototype for the waiting room theme proposed by the general surgery. One of the reasons for this was a lack of time. Visiting the three departments and holding workshops to identify issues required considerable time in the first semester. Another reason was the theme relevance. The problem of outpatient waiting rooms is not a theme specific to the surgery department, and we needed to investigate other medical departments as well. Therefore, it is important to select themes carefully to identify problems rooted in the medical department and conduct on-site inspections. This is also supported by the number of prototypes. The department with the largest number of prototypes was the neurology department, where interviews were conducted with patients with intractable neurological diseases that limit physical movement, which enabled learning about the various problems they face in their daily lives. This allowed participants to identify various problems in daily life related to writing, makeup, hospitalization, outpatient visits, generate concrete ideas, and propose numerous prototypes.
Prototypes received positive feedback, with an average of 4 or higher out of 5 points for relevance, novelty, and workability. There was no difference between medical sub-specialties, but the speech therapy game and graphic design for patients with intestinal stomas were particularly highly rated for workability, likely because most of the production is performed digitally. Although the design of the product is done digitally up to the middle, the final prototype is created analogously; thus, users may get the impression that it is farther from completion than digital content or graphics. However, most proposed prototypes were products, which shows the need for product design in the medical field.
Research on creativity suggests that the process of actually making something enhances creativity, whereas a certain degree of risk is essential (Ross and Groves, Reference Ross and Groves2023). Furthermore, the flexibility of digital production is crucial for innovation (Montagna and Cantamessa, Reference Montagna and Cantamessa2019). In this class, we used both digital and analog methods to create prototypes through trial and error, which we believe led to high-quality output. At the final presentation, there was a discussion about the practical application of the prototypes. Unfortunately, no prototypes have been put into practical use yet, but about half of the themes are being pursued as research after classes. Of the ideas, documents for patients with intestinal stomas received the highest overall evaluation; as they are paper-based prototypes to be distributed to patients, the barrier to entry is low. The games and products that directly affect patients require further development and safety evaluation, followed by user feedback and social implementation through industry-academia collaboration. In this regard, support is being sought from an organization in charge of medical device development at university hospitals.
Participant self-assessment
Participants’ self-assessments revealed that their career expectations increased, whereas their motivation and skills related to creativity remained unchanged. Regarding motivation, the median value was 5, which was the maximum value before the class, and therefore, motivation remained unchanged after the class. Most participants who chose this course had fairly high motivation for creativity, which remained at the highest level throughout the class. Regarding skills, most items had a median value of 4 before attending class, suggesting that the design graduate students, who comprised the majority of participants, had a certain level of skills. On the other hand, for many participants, this class was the first opportunity to work on a real medical topic. Therefore, participants learned that many problems in healthcare require design, and they were able to experience the effectiveness of design thinking by receiving feedback from experts in the medical field on the ideas they generated. Prior studies have also reported the positive impact of design thinking and creativity on entrepreneurship and careers (Holm, Reuterswärd and Nyotumba, Reference Holm, Reuterswärd and Nyotumba2019; Kremel and Wetter-Edman, Reference Kremel and Wetter-Edman2019; McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019). Furthermore, design education is positively correlated with students’ beliefs about their ability to engage in new product development, whereas expertise in design education affects self-efficacy in entrepreneurship (Christensen et al., Reference Christensen2023). The results of this study also support previous studies, but the career impact of this program needs to be analyzed in more detail in the future.
Assessment by faculty
The creativity skill evaluation by the faculty was very high, with a median score of 4 points or more; however, the agreement between the two evaluators was low for most items. This is probably because the five-point Likert scale was used, and the degree of evaluation varies depending on the evaluator. The agreement may be improved by developing and using an evaluation scale such as an analytical rubric that expresses individual criteria in a sentence (Rhodes and Finley, Reference Rhodes and Finley2013; Campbell et al., Reference Campbell1993). In addition, the agreement was higher for the ability to immediately express ideas in sketches or models than for other items, likely because individual skills are easier to understand and evaluate than ideas and problem identification. Previous studies have employed participants’ self-evaluations, but objective evaluations have often not been conducted (McLaughlin et al., Reference McLaughlin2019). In a class such as this one, which is mainly group work, it may be necessary to use each participant’s report in the evaluation to properly evaluate all participants. In addition to faculty evaluation, it may be possible to evaluate each other’s growth by having participants who do group work together to evaluate each other objectively.
Thematic analysis
The comments from participants from both medical and design fields indicate that this program provided them with a meaningful and positive experience. The design participants tackled previously inaccessible yet familiar problems in a clinical setting. Specifically, they identified the problems themselves, worked with team members having diverse skills and received feedback and ideas from healthcare professionals. Furthermore, the medical participants proposed solutions to their problems from a new perspective through design, discovered clues to solutions by creating prototypes and experienced manufacturing processes for the first time.
In addition, challenges in conducting the class were also identified. The first is to ensure a means of communication. Design students were reserved in contacting medical professionals involved in clinical work, and time coordination among participants was difficult. The chat tool facilitated the contact during their spare time. However, some aspects of online communication were not satisfactory. Especially in the second semester, obtaining prototyping options became necessary, and faculty members carried the production of ideas to the hospital for opinions because students from other campuses were not allowed to enter the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it was difficult to receive evaluations for games and other items that required setup. Online and in-person, on-demand and real-time means of communication need to be prepared according to the purpose. The second point is to make the class content compact and improve efficiency. Most overtime was done by participants immersed in their own creations, but it is necessary to find ways to make class time more compact. KJ method workshops should be conducted with 2–3 groups of 5–6 participants per group because of the time required to put out sticky notes when there are multiple people. In addition, an environment that allows prototyping based on free ideas must be prepared. In this class, necessary materials had to be purchased each time, and the lack of immediate prototyping was also an obstacle to rapid fabrication. In their book, Ku and Lupton (Ku and Lupton, Reference Ku and Lupton2020) propose a health design lab equipped with a cart full of various prototyping materials such as markers, yarn, aluminum foil and clay, where students can freely prototype 24/7.
Program framework
The framework of this problem-solving educational program collaborating with medicine and design departments at a university is shown in Figure 5. The faculty comprised four members: three from the design faculty and one from the hospital. Design faculty members specialized in services, products, digital content and games could broaden the range of freely generated ideas, and the final prototypes took various forms. On the other hand, the number of medical department members involved in a single class was limited to two, in consideration of the time spent on producing high-quality ideas and prototypes. To produce more substantial outputs in the future, it is necessary to involve faculty members with a variety of expertise in both medicine and design; however, deciding at what process stage they will be involved is also important. Based on past research, having a system in which design thinking supports the process from problem identification to idea development is desirable. More specialized faculty members provide support during the generation of unique ideas from this process. A faculty member from the hospital was involved in this project as a coordinator because collaborating with participants was essential. With expertise in both medicine and design, this faculty member developed a rapport with participants and faculties from both disciplines to facilitate communication, especially between the medical and design participants, who tended to be reserved toward each other.
Figure 5. Framework for a problem-solving educational program that integrates the two academic disciplines of medicine and design in a university.
Because the participants themselves performed everything from problem discovery to idea identification during the one-year program, the final outputs were prototypes. Some of them are currently studied in collaboration with other laboratories, and further verification and improvement are expected for social implementation in the future. Therefore, a framework is necessary for continued efforts after the class. Collaboration with academic research organizations is also required to promote medical device development (Goldenberg et al., Reference Goldenberg2011). If such a program is implemented over the long term, it could lead to collaborative research and social implementation between the two fields to efficiently respond to medical challenges. Moreover, it could strengthen connections between people from both faculties and generate related research to improve the quality of medical care in the future. To ensure the sustainability of such a program, it was essential to consider the benefits to the clinical site participants who volunteered. In this program, there were many benefits to the clinical field, such as solving actual problems, extracting issues and developing collaborative research. For example, in the field of neurology, nearly 100 life problems were identified based on interviews with patients. Specifically, this field aims to improve the quality of patients’ lives; because observation and extraction of issues using design thinking had not been done before, the extracted issues themselves became the research theme. It was also advantageous that some generated ideas, such as documentation for patients, had low implementation hurdles and research into products in the field of oral surgery has progressed to the point of being proven. This is closely related to the fact that the research team included faculty members specializing in both the medical and design fields. The fact that faculty members from both fields understand the benefits of each field is likely to have a major impact on sustainability.
Limitations and future research
Although this study evaluated creativity in the constructed program, the relationship with design thinking metrics should also be clarified (Blizzard et al., Reference Blizzard2015; Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli, Reference Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli2018; Coleman et al., Reference Coleman2020). Analysis related to group work is also needed as collaborative stimulation in group and individual design thinking has been previously compared (Sauder and Jin, Reference Sauder and Jin2016). A study also showed that more influential influencers were involved in decision-making in group design thinking (Singh, Cascini and McComb, Reference Singh, Cascini and McComb2022). Because the opinions of medical experts are often regarded as important, they may be considered influencers. Future studies should also examine the interdisciplinary group work of participants from the design and medical fields and other fields (Alves et al., Reference Alves2007; Ferreira, Savoy and Markey, Reference Ferreira, Savoy and Markey2020). An analysis is also required for evaluation measures other than design thinking, as studies (Yeager et al., Reference Yeager2016; Deitte and Omary, Reference Deitte and Omary2019) have found that design thinking improves the growth mindset, supporting the idea that “one’s growth can be improved through experience and effort.” A growth mindset with design thinking skills is a powerful indicator, and the impact of its integration with design and the medical field should be evaluated. Second, only two-year data were included, which means that the number of participants and output is small, and no comparison was made between those who did and did not participate in this study. A comparative study is required to increase the output. In addition, the agreement of the evaluation criteria was low and lacked intensity. Additional studies should be conducted using the aforementioned indicators. Furthermore, long-term outcomes are unclear, and employment outcomes must be investigated after a few years. Nonetheless, this study identified the framework and outcomes of a problem-solving educational program that collaborated with medical and design fields at a Japanese university with respective students and faculties.
Conclusions
We developed a problem-solving educational program involving collaboration between the medical and design fields at a Japanese university. The results of the two-year program revealed points to consider for creative outcomes in the framework. A total of 424 problems and 387 ideas for oral surgery, general surgery, neurology and nursing were identified. Finally, nine prototypes with mock-ups and functional models of products, games or service designs were created and evaluated highly for their relevance, novelty and workability. Moreover, career expectations increased after the class, whereas motivation and creativity remained high. The framework of the educational program was drawn up, and issues related to the long-term effectiveness and social implementation of the creative outcomes were clarified.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to all participants and faculty members in the medical and design fields who made this course possible.
Funding statements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23K17621, JP23H01005 and QR Program 02103.
Disclosure statements
All authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open access
