How to see the us in them

How to binnensee the us in themHow to see the us in themHospitals are supposed to nurse patients back to life.But most hospital rooms do the opposite. They are featureless, soulless white rooms lit by headache-inducing fluorescent lights.One healthcare organization set out to do something about this problem. They brought in the prestigious global plan firm IDEO to redesign the patient experience. The hospital executives were probably expecting IDEO to deliver a stylish PowerPoint presentation with creative new designs for the hospital rooms.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreInstead, what they got was a mind-numbing six-minute video clip. The video showed nothing but the ceiling of a hospital room. When you lie in a hospital bed all day, IDEOs Chief Creative Officer Paul Bennettexplained, all you do is look at the roof, and its a really shitty experience.What Bennett describes as a blinding glimpse of the bleeding obvious came after IDEO employees put themselves in a patients shoes. An IDEO designer checked into the hospital as a patient and lay in an actual patient bed for hours, getting wheeled around, staring at the ceiling tiles, and capturing the abysmal experience on a video camera. The six-minute clip of the dull tiles was a small glimpse of the overall patient journey- a mix of boredom and anxiety from feeling lost, uninformed, and out of control, as IDEOs CEO Tim Brownsaid.Six minutes of footage was sufficient for the hospital employees to spring into action. They decorated the ceilings, put up whiteboards for visitors to leave messages to the patients, and transformed the style and color of the patient rooms to make them more personal. They also put rear-view mirrors on hospital stretchers to allow patients to see and connect with the doctors and nurses wheeling them around. IDEOs presentation ultimately kickstarted a broader discussion to improve t he overall patient experience so that patients were treated less like objects to be positioned and allocated, and more like people in stress and pain, Brown explained.IDEOs approach to redesigning the patient journey carries important lessons for us all. Everything we observe in the world is through our own eyes. In our professional lives, we look at our products and services from our perspective- not the perspective of our customers. In our personal lives, we refuse to make eye contact with people of different persuasions- let alone see the world through their eyes. As a result, it becomes exceedingly difficult to see someone elses truth.The solution doesnt require a huge budget or enormous resources. You can follow IDEOs lead and proverbially become a patient for the day. If you work at a sportswear company, walk a mile in your competitors shoes and ask yourself why some might rightfully choose to wear them over your brand. If youre an airline executive, call the customer service line and endure the excruciating experience of pressing numerous buttons to escape the automated prompts, only to be rewarded by waiting on hold for 45 minutes. If you want to improve a piece of software, as IDEOs founder David Kelleyputs it, watch people using it and see when they grimace.I could go on. If youre a politician devising immigration policy, stay in a refugee camp overnight. If youre a policymaker working on disability rights, put yourself in a wheelchair for an entire day. If youre a Democrat, spend a weekend in Trump country (and vice versa), engage with the voters, and listen- reallylisten- with no agenda to persuade.When were busy creating PowerPoint decks and organizational charts, when were lost in focus groups and survey results, its easy to forget theres a human dimension to everything we do.Empathy doesnt require any grand gestures. All it takes is a desire to see the truth instead of the convenient and to feel what the other person feels for the briefest of mo ments.Inspiration My podcast interview withRob Walker, the author ofThe Art of Noticing 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday.Ozan Varol is a rocket scientist turned law professor and bestselling author.Click hereto download a free copy of his e-book, The Contrarian Handbook 8 Principles for Innovating Your Thinking. Along with your free e-book, youll get the Weekly Contrarian - a newsletter that challenges conventional wisdom and changes the way we look at the world (plus access to exclusive content for subscribers only).This article originally appeared on Ozan Varol.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people