Catalyst, OpenQRS
"Play is the highest form of research"
- Einstein
Our Team
Kate Michi Ettinger
Design Approach
Social entrepreneur, innovation & design consultant and health care ethicist-mediator. Trained in law, bioethics and
conflict resolution with over fifteen years health-related experience in private, government, academic, non-profit sectors. Driven to learn and committed to fostering success in endeavors that promote public health and human dignity.
• Effective communicator with diverse audiences and adept in multi-cultural environments.
• Innovative, results-oriented problem solver committed to learning and excellence.
• Creative, user-centered designer of processes, products and services.
• Collaborative team player with the initiative to also work well independently.
conflict resolution with over fifteen years health-related experience in private, government, academic, non-profit sectors. Driven to learn and committed to fostering success in endeavors that promote public health and human dignity.
• Effective communicator with diverse audiences and adept in multi-cultural environments.
• Innovative, results-oriented problem solver committed to learning and excellence.
• Creative, user-centered designer of processes, products and services.
• Collaborative team player with the initiative to also work well independently.
In my design work, I developed a passion for the art of designing for aichaku-- a Japanese concept that translates roughly as "love fit". I thrive on teams that value and embrace the challenge of crafting "love fit" experiences when designing interactions with products, services, events or systems.
As a cross disciplinarian, I focus on strengthening the spaces in between. Most health care interactions involve both the clinician and the patient (as well as potentially other stakeholders: hospitals, family, payers). To design for aichaku in these multi-stakeholder interactions required evolving my human-centered design experience. User-centered design in these scenarios often privileges one user's experience over the other and results in a failed experience, a failed product or a failed interaction- often all of the above.
"Constraints are what makes beautiful design." Aza Raskin quoting his father, Macintosh designer Jeff Raskin. By integrating my bioethics and conflict resolution expertise with my design background, I developed relation-centered design, a method to design for an "aichaku" experience for these complex, multi-stakeholder relationships.
Relation-centered design is an approach to interaction design that considers how a product/service/system will impact the relationships of the people using it. By attending to the power, social and cultural context of a user's relationships, relation-centered design results in products that support, enhance and strengthen our relationships. Paying attention to relationships is essential for great product design because it's our relationships that make us human.
As a cross disciplinarian, I focus on strengthening the spaces in between. Most health care interactions involve both the clinician and the patient (as well as potentially other stakeholders: hospitals, family, payers). To design for aichaku in these multi-stakeholder interactions required evolving my human-centered design experience. User-centered design in these scenarios often privileges one user's experience over the other and results in a failed experience, a failed product or a failed interaction- often all of the above.
"Constraints are what makes beautiful design." Aza Raskin quoting his father, Macintosh designer Jeff Raskin. By integrating my bioethics and conflict resolution expertise with my design background, I developed relation-centered design, a method to design for an "aichaku" experience for these complex, multi-stakeholder relationships.
Relation-centered design is an approach to interaction design that considers how a product/service/system will impact the relationships of the people using it. By attending to the power, social and cultural context of a user's relationships, relation-centered design results in products that support, enhance and strengthen our relationships. Paying attention to relationships is essential for great product design because it's our relationships that make us human.
Design Skills portfolio
Why Mural?
After college, Kate immersed herself in the world of non-profits, worked in botanical gardens, and certified to teach English as a second language. Then she embarked on an outdoor leadership and emergency medicine course- at which point her father said with honest exasperation: "What are you doing? From this thing to that, none of it ties together!?"
Kate replied earnestly: "You're right, Dad, the things that I do don't seem related, but, trust me, they are. It's like painting a mural. In the early stages- the canvas is blank with colors scattered- a splotch of green here, some yellow there, a splash of red. It doesn't look like much of anything, but when it's done, we will look back and see how every color was necessary to make the mural that will be my life."
Kate replied earnestly: "You're right, Dad, the things that I do don't seem related, but, trust me, they are. It's like painting a mural. In the early stages- the canvas is blank with colors scattered- a splotch of green here, some yellow there, a splash of red. It doesn't look like much of anything, but when it's done, we will look back and see how every color was necessary to make the mural that will be my life."
Meet Kate:
I created this infographic for my team in Acumen's Storytelling for Change course, 2014. Still mostly accurate, 2015.
"A heart once touched by love is incapable of cowardice."
- Cesare
- Cesare
Visual Story: A prototype
(apologies, it's my first animated film)
SS Stubbs
The SS Stubbs, a 'fictional' tugboat, was created for my undergrad application to the University of Chicago- to which I was accepted though I chose Johns Hopkins University instead. At JHU, I studied classics and Latin American Studies and my undergraduate thesis was a comparative mythology of the underworlds of the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Mayans.
For a fellowship application in 2012, I was invited to create a visual story. I am neither artist nor designer, but I accepted the challenge. In a three day sprint, I made my first animated video that brought the SS Stubbs into the 21st Century in order to explain the essence of my journey from then until now. Surprising how appropriate a tugboat is as a metaphor to my clinical ethics work. While I have a lot to learn in the art of storytelling and animation, I hope that you enjoy this adventure with Lil Tug!
For a fellowship application in 2012, I was invited to create a visual story. I am neither artist nor designer, but I accepted the challenge. In a three day sprint, I made my first animated video that brought the SS Stubbs into the 21st Century in order to explain the essence of my journey from then until now. Surprising how appropriate a tugboat is as a metaphor to my clinical ethics work. While I have a lot to learn in the art of storytelling and animation, I hope that you enjoy this adventure with Lil Tug!
prototype for a visual story that responded to the open question: Tell us about you
<Post View> PS: I made death an ally by living this question daily:
If I die tomorrow, will I be content with how I lived life today?
If I die tomorrow, will I be content with how I lived life today?