UXA2022 Day 1; Paul Merrel and Lauren Argenta - From matter to meta

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UX Australia
UX Australia 2022 – Hybrid Conference
Thursday, 25 August 2022
Captioned by: Kasey Allen & Carmel Downes

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on our video because the host has stopped it. We are sick but we are still
nice.
STEVE BATY: We are waiting for the cheque to clear. (LAUGHTER) just be
a moment. Is that better? Here we are. Thank you.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Thank you, so much. We are so sorry we can't be
there with all of you lovely people but hopefully we can be there and
share energy this way. Myself, Lauren and Paul, will be talking
through - we were meant to be joined by a third person, Darian, our
partner and colleague throughout all of this but he hasn't been able to
join us through personal reasons. He will be here with the power of
technology and hopefully that will make sense. Let's get started.
From Meta to matter, forming multidisciplinary teams. Designing a
building is hard, I am sure you know that. Designing a building in one well
connected team, who all know each other, is super hard. Designing a
building with many teams when we are talking about multidisciplinary
practices is incredibly hard but it can be done and it can be done well.
When all parts are amplified, outcomes can really deliver.
PAUL MERRELL: I am Paul, we are a service design organisation
improving the lives of people as they interact with the world around them.
The way we do that is use the philosophy and tool set of design as a way
of approaching the ambiguity and complexity of challenges, just like this
one.
LAUREN ARGENTA: I am Lauren, a design director from Thinkmill. We are
an Australian engineering consultancy company. We specialise in highly
functional products, design systems and the intersection of design and

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engineering. In 2021, Meld and Thinkmill came together to blend our
individual strengths to create a full spectrum of service designs, strategy,
research, new XUI design and build. It is enabling us to create a
multidisciplinary collaboration for tackling complex problems as and when
needed. This is bringing together service design and engineering-led
design.
PAUL MERRELL: That collaboration enables us to move from the matter
to the matter and back again in one team, specialising in our respective
areas but combining those skill sets and approaches to make the end-to-
end process much more robust.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Meta and Thinkmill joined forces with the Australian
Digital Health Agency to undertake some of the identified challenges.
Since January, we created a dedicated squad with blended practices from
a search severed UX and UI design in engineering to be able to realise
possible potential solutions for the future of My Health Record here in
Australia. With the help of Darian, the director of experience and the
service design from the Australian Digital Health Agency who you are
about to hear from, we will tell you about how we created a diverse
multidisciplinary team within that context to solve the challenges that we
were presented with.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: Hello everyone, I am Darian Eckersley. Access and
sharing of critical health information can improve health outcomes and
the opportunity to deliver better access and management of this
information from birth presents an amazing opportunity for this to follow
and support citizens' health care through their life. My Health Record lets
Australians control their health information securely in one place, any

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time, meaning it is available when and where it is needed, either in an
emergency, managing your health ongoing or during a health crisis, such
as the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together health information needed
by you or your health care providers, medicines, allergies and test or scan
results. Health care providers like doctors, specialists and hospital staff
may also be able to see your information when they need to securely,
including in an accident or emergency for improved safety, avoiding
adverse events, duplication of services, improving patient outcomes and
reduction of time gathering critical clinical information for more effective
timely care. My Health Record strives for experience design to deliver on
the following themes, a relevant and rich consumer health story, timely,
accurate and digestible health information, deft care coordination and
collaboration, trusted easy privacy control, inclusive fit for purpose access
and availability, enhanced technical capability and interoperability and
strong cross experiences.
LAUREN ARGENTA: When I fell pregnant with my daughter, there was
new complex health processes that I had never come across or knew that
even existed. Those antenatal processes are complex and they ramp up
quickly as you go through the process. As somebody who grew up outside
of Australia, I didn't have prior exposure to health services within our
health system that would have informed or guided me through this. For
most, the first time it is going to be an unknown process and as the
antenatal journey continues to pregnancy, it consists of many services
and processes that all inter connect.
PAUL MERRELL: Once the bub is born, there is a vast amount of health
care management tasks that parents and carers have to undertake and
there is an increasingly large amount of information that they will need to

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remember for each and every child. That amount increases over time as
they grow and grow and go through different vaccinations, different child
health checks until the child is of an age that they can start to take
ownership of their health data can which is about 14.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: We have this opportunity at this early discovery
phase to invest in a design-led approach and delivering a guiding
understanding of what the future of the My Health Record system could
look like to inform the future product direction. Providing this information
naturally is challenging, given differences across states and territories.
The baby books, immunisations schedules, routine checks and schedules,
services available, record systems, policies and challenges, we need to
take all the variables and parents and carers needs into account to make
access to desirable, feasible.
LAUREN ARGENTA: The challenge we must set is how should pregnancy
and childhood data be integrated and serviced into My Health Record in
both a desirable and also feasible way to serve all Australians?
PAUL MERRELL: When we think about desirability, we start off with what
people need and what they aspire to in their health care experience. Then
we look at how could those needs be better delivered to in a digital way
by My Health Record and importantly, how can we ensure that that
experience is inclusive for all users of My Health Record.
LAUREN ARGENTA: We then went into the focus of feasibility. We started
with the thought of what is the structure of the data? How is it configured
or not? What metadata is attempted? Is it structured or unstructured and
how can it be manipulated? We asked ourselves of the question of what is

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the platform and how ostensible is it? By that we mean how easily can
you join into it, onto it, around it or connect to it? Then you have to take
into considerations of policy, of legislation and also of clinical safety.
PAUL MERRELL: Desirability is about making design decisions for My
Health record that are in the interests of people with lived experience and
as health care providers rather than in support of data and technology.
This doesn't mean that we are ignoring technology implications. The
important part is keeping that tension between people as users of My
Health Record and the technology of My Health Record. It means we are
placing a priority on people and their experiences rather than prioritising
engineering and uses this lens of desirability to prioritise those design
decisions and resolve design challenges.
LAUREN ARGENTA: We start with desirability first because if we started
with feasibility first, then we may never build something that is most
simple, loveable and complete because we may miss the opportunity.
When we move to feasibility we have to consider the constraints. We have
to consider the realities and those at times can provide us with other
opportunities because they make us think harder, smarter and be creative
within what we are presented with. The important part is really resting
and learning from the different people that are involved, the different
multidisciplinary practitioners to be able to leverage the tension between
who has which practice, what should go from desirability through to
feasibility.
PAUL MERRELL: In the context of the project what does that actually
mean? We want to share some of the things that we discovered. There is
a lack of consolidation which means health information is in different

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places at different times. Consumers get different experiences and receive
different support, depending on where they go in that pregnancy journey.
Privacy and trust around data sharing are key and then there's the burden
of administration, so paper, significant administrative burden on people
and also health care providers. What this means is we discover something
that's highly desirable for people which is reducing that burden of
administration, saving them time, saving them effort, saving them
forgetting the paper records when they go along to an appointment but
we have to balance that with that lack of consolidation and health care
information in disparate places. While it is desirable to reduce that burden
of administration, what becomes difficult, in terms of feasibility, is that
complexity and consolidation, which limits that opportunity for that
desirable outcome. The point is, a multidisciplinary team can take those
two elements and maintain that tension between what's desirable,
reducing that burden of administration and then at the same time
balancing that with trying to resolve that complexity around consolidation.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Where did that get us to? What we have here is a
conceptual illustration of some of the ideas. I emphasise conceptual
because this is about what the future might look like, but it is more about
wrapping up the desirable and feasible ideas and concepts that were
generated. What you can see in some of this walk through that we have
here is that we are trying to look at ways in which the current constraint
we can actually answer some of those desirable avenues that we
discovered through the processes. For example, through pregnancy, it is a
very structured process. Let's see if we could orient you to the position
you are at. It is run by a week to week set of different points and things
you need to do at different times.
Secondly, being able to aggregate in unstructured data that would

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otherwise sit on your phone or on a post it note so it is in one space could
alleviate some of the burden of admin. Whilst aggregating all appointment
systems that are across the various different services is nigh impossible,
finding ways in which we would enable the complexities of organising our
time, be in one place, may be a possibility. All this brings together and to
life the proposal of the conceptual desirable and feasible future.
What do we have here? This is us going through the takeaways, the
learnings of when you are taking really hard to solve complex challenges
we were faced with with a multidisciplinary team. This is a certain group
of learnings that can hopefully help others undertaking similar processes,
maximise their effectiveness as they go through. We will go through these
and hopefully there will be takeaways you can use tomorrow or if you are
putting together a team, you can take these into account as ways in
which to orchestrate assemble.
PAUL MERRELL: The first is be multidisciplinary from the beginning.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: Even the complexity of health records and
considering customer needs, clinical governance, technical needs, policy
legislations will ensure privacy and security is critical to work as a
multidisciplinary team. This should be no different for desired agencies
that we work with if we are to get the best design outcomes.
PAUL MERRELL: We are talking about bringing together a
multidisciplinary team such as Meld and Thinkmill, we are talking about a
team within the Australian Digital Health Agency as well, so that is
harnessing the power of their service designers and the talented
designers that are part of that particular group but it is also bringing in
clinical safety, it's bringing in policy, it's bringing in the business analysts

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from the start of the project so you can share that language, talk with
each other and work with each other as the design evolves.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Number two, is fast and complete onboarding is
mission critical.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: To get the best value out of our service partners
and expertise, it made sense to share as much material as we could,
introduce them to the right people across the agency, really treat them as
we would onboarding a team member. Certainly wasn't about throwing a
brief over the fence.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Within days, the team onboarded us and we were
given access to reliable and essential documentation. This transparency of
access and the way it was spun up so quickly, enabled us to hit the
ground running but it prevented time being lost during onboarding or
additional admin tasks that would have to happen to get our balls rolling.
Building on a shared and existing foundation of knowledge and work that
had gone before us made sure we were equipped with everything we
could be to undertake the challenge at hand.
PAUL MERRELL: It is about creating a partnership with honest and open
communication.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: The thing about this one, it wasn't anything we
formally agreed but there was a relationship very much aligned to our
internal team values while we were delivering the project. Honesty,
respectful critique and transparency with how we worked together. These
values and behaviours established to your team, I encourage you to make

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sure you share them at the project kick-off when collaborating with an
agency.
PAUL MERRELL: They are nice words but what does it mean in action? It
means us setting up those times, making ourselves available, people
within the agency also making themselves available to have those regular
show cases. The regular weekly catch-ups, the moments when we are
reaching a critical point in the design to have those right conversations w
that extended team, to be able to move the design forward but sharing,
we are able to create that muscle memory together.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Maintain a healthy tension between desirable and
feasible.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: Our approach to start with what is desirable from a
consumer point of view and learn through a vision of what My Health
Record could do in the future. After that we needed the team to dial it
back to what was realistic and work with the agencies teams to refine and
prioritise what could be delivered in the nearer future. This was a valuable
approach, it was efficient in informing current scope decisions.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Being able to go wide before narrowing in was
essential but also being given the space and the time to be able to do that
was critical. That was one thing that the team at ADHA faltered so we
could explore what the future could look like before getting into the
details of what the day to day requirements would be. It ensured we
could push the boundaries and also get to a practical end place that could
help the team now taking the work on to propel forward.

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PAUL MERRELL: This is not a business as usual approach, it is something
you can use when you need that step change.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: We had in house experience the search design team
who agreed to take on this kind of work. We found in this instance, using
an external specialist team and effectively connecting with the internal
teams enabled us to get fresh perspectives with additional freedom to
explore through design discovery.
PAUL MERRELL: It is about bringing in that team to give a fresh
perspective, to take a new look at the evidence is to stand on the
shoulders of the work that's already been done as that foundation to
evolve the design and take it a little bit further and maybe bring in
different ways of thinking, again empowered by the use of a
multidisciplinary team.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Lastly, work on the shared artefacts, where they are
most accessible.
DARIAN ECKERSLEY: We use tools across the organisation by getting the
teams using that we could collaborate and share work more easily.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Creating accessible places for all disciplines to access
content is and was essential. As creatives, this means us stepping off of
just the tools we use, so thinking about particularly other things. So
finding ways on which the content we create can go and be housed into
places that they are already going to was mission critical. In summary.
PAUL MERRELL: Start off on the right foot and be multidisciplinary from

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the beginning.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Informing that team if you are that person creating
them. Make sure you are finding ways for an onboarding to be inclusive in
the short amount of time. Think about the services that you have in place
that might prevent that and how you can work around to facilitate a
seamless combination of skills from external, internal and across
departments.
PAUL MERRELL: Get that collaboration going with honest and open
communication. Treat them as verbs rather than latitudes.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Utilise the multiskill sets to keep the tension between
desirable and feasible throughout and let people stay in their mode but
come together to create all the bonds and all the translation ties across
the whole process.
PAUL MERRELL: Take a fresh look at the evidence and use this approach
when you need that step change and make sure you are standing on - or
using those foundations that are already there.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Finally, be considerate to the broader teams when
creating shared artefacts to ensure that the content is maximally
accessible.
PAUL MERRELL: Thank you, so much for having us. We do really wish we
could be there with you. We would like to take this opportunity to thank
Darian Eckersley, Jen Brown and the team at the Australian Digital Health
Agency for the opportunity to collaborate on the project and the talk

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today but also that great pushes of improving the health of all
Australians.
LAUREN ARGENTA: Thank you to you all for listening and we hope that
we have some actionable go tos for you to take on as you move into
these types of projects with these types of teams. Have a great day.
PAUL MERRELL: Have fun. (APPLAUSE)
STEVE BATY: Thanks, Paul and Lauren. I hope you both feel much better
very soon. Thank you. Our next speaker today is coming up on stage.
Please join me in welcoming Fiona Armstrong. (APPLAUSE)
STEVE BATY: Thank you, very much. Over to you.
FIONA ARMSTRONG: Thank you. I am delighted to be here this
afternoon. It is such a pleasure to be able to be here in person and talking
to everyone again. I wanted to share with you this afternoon some
insights around how to design services in sensitive areas. Listening to all
of the great presentations that we have heard this morning and early
afternoon, it follows on nicely from a lot of the things that we have been
talking about.
My name is Fiona Armstrong. I work at Liquid Interactive. I wanted
to share with you today some insights and learnings from my personal
journey over the last 20 years of working in sensitive and complex topics.
It is the first time I have pooled these together and try and distil learnings
from a variety of projects, working across lots of different areas into a few
principles and insights and takeaways for today. I will use some examples
from areas as diverse as older Australians, mental health, bereavement

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UXA2022 Day 1; Paul Merrel and Lauren Argenta - From matter to meta

UXA2022 Day 1; Paul Merrel and Lauren Argenta - From matter to meta

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UXA2022 Day 1; Paul Merrel and Lauren Argenta - From matter to meta

UXA2022 Day 1; Paul Merrel and Lauren Argenta - From matter to meta

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