Designing Healthcare with Marta Guy
Tell me a bit about the women’s lens in your work:
Often women are not seen as a specific constituent or a business priority – unless it’s driven by potential profitability or value contribution. It can still be difficult to advocate for focusing on specific groups because of legal compliance and the risk of the perception of discrimination, even if we are designing for a marginalised group.
But, when we have been able to segment the data by gender, I’ve found that there is a huge opportunity to design for women in healthcare in the form of digital platforms and care service offerings.
What are some learnings and insights at the intersection of healthcare and women?
Aged women are invisible in healthcare
The experience of a woman who is aging, who may live longer than her spouse and therefore living alone for much of her later years, is not thought about at all. We need to ask how we can help her remain independent and vital in her community. How might we design for an aged woman living alone, who is also experienced and influential in her community?
Women influence healthcare practices in their families
There are also signals that women are influential in their extended families as they age and they become the matriarch of the family. There is a tribe of children and grandchildren they can influence, and healthcare misses that opportunity. In traditional folklore, an aged woman was powerful, wise, credible, a guide to younger people. What if we could support whole family health through the influence of matriarchs?
Women tend to be better at self-managing health
We found that women are more likely to take care of their own health (in addition to that of their families). As we move into remote home-health management platforms, we should be including a gender component in this, given that women might be more responsive to this behavior shift.
Understanding and designing for different caregiver roles
Women are often in caregiver roles for their families and spouses. There are different degrees and attributes associated with this – nursing for someone at their bedside is different than ensuring that everyone gets their annual physical. If we put women at the center of healthcare design, we might design caregiving services differently. We’ve also found that non-white communities have lower trust on professional medical care and here a strong matriarchal influence can play a role. In multicultural and multi-racial communities, people talk about stories, remedies, practices and rituals being passed down from mothers and grandmothers. How might we engage healthcare and wellness services to empower this caregiving role?
Ideas of “femininity” can cause care avoidance
Women are less responsive to sleep treatments, for example, because snoring is not considered a feminine trait, sleep apnea diagnosis is much lower among women. They are less likely to respond to the treatment too, because it’s a huge machine that they wear at bedtime, which can feel unsexy and evoke feelings of shame, impacting women more than men. Other conditions or treatments that may evoke shame in women could consider this possibility as well.
Emphasise the attributes of women’s identities
Grit, pioneerism, survivalism are individualist themes that oppose community and collectivism. They are traditional masculine archetypes supporting the singular hero’s journey. There are women today saying that this resonates with them and that we can reclaim these themes to achieve success with singular drive. In this scenario, we take traditionally masculine attributes and frame them to the feminine, shaping ourselves to achieve success with that formula. But men don’t do it on their own; no one does it on their own. Rather we need to ask what are the alternatives? We can take traits of nurturing, collectivism, community – that are traditionally feminine and create stories about that which also demonstrates strength and power.
What are some common misconceptions about designing for women?
Designing for women doesn’t mean we’re excluding men. There’s a real challenge in communicating this and to make people aware that there is a disparity to begin with.
About Marta Guy
Marta Guy (she/her/hers) has over 15 years' experience as a strategic design and innovation leader. She's deeply passionate about learning from and designing for people to reinvent their experiences and radically improve their lives. A believer in design as a tool for global progress, she is committed to understanding the needs of women, people of color, and other marginalized communities, and driving equity in designing solutions that serve them.
Most recently, her work has focused on developing new offerings and value propositions in healthcare, supporting people to achieve their best health. Marta co-created the human-centered design capability at Author by Humana, an internal start-up at Humana, where she influenced everything from the new brand platform, marketing and communications, to digital assets, service experiences, and care services. She recently joined Carelon, formerly Anthem, to lead innovation and incubation of digital platform offerings, creating care services that promise to engage people and communities with their health in new ways.
Marta has lived and worked across several countries on 3 continents and 3 tiny islands, starting with Micronesia where she served in the Peace Corps. She currently lives with her husband and rescue dog in sunny Alameda, CA a half mile from the beach, which is glorious!