Let people change the design while it can still change

What we found in the news

A May 2025 JMIR AI study (opens in a new tab) explored how patients and medical AI professionals understood participation in AI-supported care. The authors described patients feeling they had:

“little influence over its development”

— Laura Arbelaez Ossa and colleagues

These qualitative interviews examined perceptions, not the effectiveness of a particular design method. They prompt a useful question for any team introducing technology: are people being asked to accept a finished experience, or can their contribution still change something important?

Why this matters to us

An invitation to give feedback can mean several different things. Sometimes a team wants to know whether the buttons are clear. Sometimes the more useful conversation is about whether those buttons lead to the right task at all.

Imagine a community service preparing a new resource screen. At an accessible workshop table, participants move paper pieces into the order they would find useful.

One person wants the contact option before the suggested activities. Another wants to compare two choices without losing the first page. The designer redraws the route while the group can still question it.

At genus, that early conversation interests us because it can expose assumptions before they become part of the everyday service.

Say which decisions are open

Tell participants what they can influence and what is constrained. A supplier may have fixed technical limits, while wording, content order, and the way help is offered remain open.

Be honest when a proposed change needs further investigation. Saying that every suggestion will be adopted creates an expectation the team may be unable to meet.

In our imagined workshop, the group can alter the order of the resource screen and propose another route to a person. The team still needs to check what the configured platform supports.

A clear decision boundary makes the contribution more useful. People know where their experience can affect the design and which questions require someone else’s answer.

Make the work possible to join

Paper pieces, a spoken walk-through, a working prototype, and an individual conversation can each reveal different aspects of the experience.

Choose methods with the people involved. Consider the room, timing, communication support, and whether someone needs to contribute from elsewhere. A workshop should not quietly exclude people whose experience is most relevant.

Give participants a task they recognize and room to explain their reasoning. Their contribution may concern an unfamiliar term, a missing choice, or a step that asks for information too soon.

Avoid treating one person as a representative of everyone with a similar access need. Record whose experience was included and where further perspectives would help.

Bring back the next version

After the session, show what changed. A side-by-side example can make the response clearer than a general message thanking everyone for their input.

Explain the decisions that remain open and those the team could not make. Participants may offer another way to meet the underlying need once they understand the constraint.

Try the revised route with people. A change that solves one difficulty can introduce another, and the team should learn that while adjustment is still practical.

Keep a simple record connecting the concern, the decision, and the next check. It helps prevent a participant’s useful observation from disappearing when a different colleague takes over the project.

The purpose is a design informed by people’s contributions, with visible responses—not a collection of comments detached from the work.

What this means for the people you serve

People can contribute knowledge about the task without needing to be technology specialists. They may choose to take part in a workshop, offer one observation, or decline. When they do contribute, they should be able to see how their experience influenced the next version or why a suggestion remains unresolved.

The genus connection

Today, genus care-app and care-wall experiences are configured around an organization’s audiences, resources, and enabled features. That creates practical choices about how people encounter information and support.

We would bring participants and frontline colleagues into those choices while the setup is taking shape. Confirm the supported options, try the proposed journey, and return with the revised experience. Their contribution can help the team choose a more useful configuration.

One question to take away

What meaningful part of this experience can people still change when we invite them to contribute?