Jeans in the boardoomThe rise of a design culture at nib Health Funds

nib is a health insurer, started within a culture of steel and coal. How has it come to embrace a design culture?

So - what is a Design Culture?

But do these things reallybuild a design culture?

• User needs addressed

• Focus on problem solving

• Designers in leadership

Design is important to success of the business

Where we were ...

A long list of features

Design was the Surface

No feedback

No improvements

No change six years later

Despite changing user needs, technology and business goals -

nothing changed ...

So where were the designersin all this?

We were in our Ivory

Tower

Safe from harm, far from valuable.

Where we are ...

we talk about valuerather than features

Design is baked inresulting in real compromise

Frequent feedback

Continuous improvementwe iterated from static to responsive

Not an exclusive clubso others share empathy with the user

• we talk about “value”

• design is baked in

• frequent feedback

• continuous improvement

• design is not an exclusive club

What about today ...

What about the model?

Valuable + Visible

Valuable + Visible

Valuable + Visible

Let’s dig deeper into valuable

Leadershipto set vision and be an advocate

Iterativeso we know we are creating the value

Divergent and convergent

to uncover new value

but, this is just what we do

To change a culture,we also need to be ...

Transparent and

collaborative

Vision and advocacy

Leadership

Allowing value to be created

Iterative

Leadership

Divergentand

Convergent

to grow through transparency

Iterative

Leadership

Divergentand

Convergent

Our Learning• Too much talk

• Design by committee

• We weren’t sharing goals

• Jargon

Where to next?• Better iteration

• Work closer with devs

• Dev’s in user testing

• Jeans in the boardroom?

Jeans in the boardoom

Jeans in the boardoomNot about the new replacing the old,

but the two co-existing.

Thankyou

glyn.thomas@nib.com.au

t.hogan@nib.com.au

@glynthomas

@timswit

All illustrations are by Pearson Scott Foresman and are available within the public domain through wikimedia.

All icons from the nounproject.com - ping pong bat s by Claudio Gomboli and the log by Diego Aguirre.