Designing the Patient Experience: a Service Design Lab
Designing the Patient Experience: a Service Design Lab
Workshop with Rui Patrício · 14 October 2026SPX International Congress
Workshop with Rui Patrício · 14 October 2026SPX International Congress
Conceptual focus
LEARNING FRAMEWORK
For most patients and their families, the first and last 15 minutes of a hospital episode are emotionally decisive: arrival, initial contact with staff, waiting, discharge conversations, and the moment of departure. These are often the moments most remembered (positively or negatively) yet also the ones most exposed to confusion, rushed communication, and fragmentation.
This workshop offers a 5-hour, hands-on lab in which participants use ideaChef®, a gamified service design tool, to co-create concrete improvements to these “moments that matter”.
CENTRAL CHALLENGE
How might we redesign the first and last 15 minutes of a hospital episode to ensure patients and their families feel welcomed, informed, and confident?
Target
INTENDED PARTICIPANTS
This workshop is intended for a cross-functional audience including patient experience and quality professionals, nurses, physicians and allied health professionals, ward and service managers as well as operations staff, healthcare innovation, design and digital teams, and patient and family partners.
The ideal participant group brings together profiles from different hospitals and services, fostering multidisciplinary perspectives and shared learning across organisational and professional boundaries.
Practical details
ENGLISH WORKSHOP
This workshop will be held in English. Limited places available.
More than 8 specialised workshops
IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH
If you have any questions about this workshop,
please contact us at [email protected]
Objectives
LEARNING OUTCOMES
This workshop will contribute to the SPX Congress by offering a live demonstration of how service design and gamification can be applied to a concrete, high-impact patient experience topic.
It will provide participants with a set of practical and testable concepts to improve the first and last 15 minutes of care, as well as a repeatable method that can be adapted within their own organisations to engage teams and patients in co-design initiatives.
PARTICIPANTS WILL
• Apply a structured, gamified service design method (i.e., IdeaChef) to a real-world patient experience challenge.
• Co-create a Minimum Viable Concept (“recipe”) to improve the first and/or last 15 minutes of care.
• Use simple journey thinking to make the patient’s experience tangible.
• Reflect on how playful formats can support serious improvement work across roles.
Programme structure
SESSION FLOW
The final agenda with confirmed timings will be shared soon.
Click on each title to view full details and the duration of each block.
0. Welcome session at Hôpital National des Quinze-Vingts [ 90 min ]
The day will begin with a plenary welcome and orientation session in the auditorium at Hôpital National des Quinze-Vingts, including introductory remarks by the Director General and the Patient Experience lead. This opening session will present the host hospital’s perspective on Patient Experience and provide institutional context for the day.
Following this introduction, participants registered for the workshop with Rui Patrício will join their group and move to the designated room. Lunch will be provided at the hospital, and a break will be scheduled during the workshop day. The final timetable with confirmed timings and room allocation will be shared soon.
The day will conclude with a closing cocktail bringing together participants from all seven workshops, held across the three satellite hospitals in Paris.
1. Introduction to the challenge [ 30 min ]
Short welcome and patient story illustrating issues in the first/last 15 minutes. Clarification of scope (arrival – first clinical contact; discharge – going home) and presentation of the “How might we…” question.
2. ideaChef – how to play [ 30 min ]
Brief explanation of ideaChef® as a collaborative, gamebased service design tool. Walkthrough of the board and rules: individual idea writing, sharing, clustering, and light prioritisation.
Introduction to the notion of a “recipe” and Minimum Viable Concept.
3. Generate ideas & select one to play [ 45 min ]
Brainstorming of pain points and ideas related to the first/last 15 minutes.
Teams are formed, share ideas, cluster them, and use quick voting to select one idea per team to develop further during the play session.
4. Play session with ideaChef [ 120 min, incl. short break ]
Teams run a full ideaChef session on their chosen idea, going by the desirability & patient experience: who is the target patient; what changes in how the first/last 15 minutes feel; key touchpoints, as well as feasibility & implementation: required
resources, risks, constraints, and a realistic pilot (where to start, who to involve, how to know if it works).
Each team concludes with a structured “patient experience recipe” ready for testing.
5. Pitch [ 45 min ]
Teams prepare a simple poster (title, patient scenario, idea, pilot).
Each team presents a 5-minute pitch, followed by a brief Q&A session.
The aim is to share actionable concepts, not polished projects.
6. Discussion [ 30 min ]
Guided reflection on what participants learned about the first/last 15 minutes and about using a gamified tool for patient experience work.
Collective harvest of key insights and potential next steps in participants’ own
organisations.
7. Networking Cocktail [ 7pm – 9pm ]
At the end of the workshop, participants from the workshops hosted at the same hospital will proceed to the closing cocktail, courtesy of the Embassy of Denmark.
Please note that SPX does not organise transportation between Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts and the cocktail location.
Rui Patrício
FACULTY
Rui Patrício is an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Professor at the University of Aveiro and a member of the Shared Patient eXperience (SPX) board of directors.
He holds a PhD from the University of Aveiro, recognized as a European Doctorate, with research mobility at the Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design. Rui’s research interests lie at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship design, and patient experience. His applied research in global firms, hospitals, and non-profits has led to publications in relevant scientific journals and a tangible impact on people’s lives.
In the healthcare sector, Rui has coordinated projects in maternity care, electronic platforms and digital health, experience measurement, and clinical trials. His work involves redesigning patient touchpoints, service design, and creating innovative products and educational content, employing human-centered design approaches.