Redesigning Death | Shoshana Berger | Slush 2016

[Music] [Music] [Applause] hello let's go back to this one so you have a new idea you can't wait to get it out into the world you can see the destination but you're not at all sure what the journey looks like after all you've never done this before the exact same thing can be said about death death is the great unknowable and yet it's one of the few human experiences that unites us another human experience that unites us is birth and think about the amount of preparation that we do to bring new life into the world we read books we write birth plans we have parties death is every bit as natural as life and in not preparing for it and not looking at it we're missing an experience we're missing a way to design that experience to make it our own the thing is we really have no idea where to start a death we are true beginners and that comes with all of the fear and vulnerability of not knowing what to do so let me give you some examples when you ask people what their wishes are at the end of life the first thing that comes up is I want to die at home and yet the majority of us end up dying in the hospital now don't get me wrong hospitals are amazing places that perform miracles every day but as well intentioned as doctors and hospitals are they're trained to treat our disease and not the whole human being they're not designed to look after our emotional life for our spiritual longings people want to die at home because it's comfortable it's it reflects their identity they end up dying in the hospital because they have no idea what choices to make to avoid that path let me give you another example when you ask people what they want to avoid at the end of life they say I don't want to be a burden on my family and yet if they're not having conversations with their family about what their wishes are all of those critical care decisions end up with their family when my own father started losing his mind to dementia my sister and I had no clue what questions to ask him before it was too late the last couple of years of his life he ended up going to the hospital repeatedly and because he didn't understand why he was there he would get up and wander the halls and the nurses ended up having to strap his arms down to the bed it drove my sister and I to distraction to see him strapped down like an animal so finally I went to him and said dad are you ready to let go are you done all he could manage was and of course I had no idea what that meant another way in which we are true beginners at death is that our doctors are not trained how to have end-of-life conversations and so they're complete beginners too and families of course want to fight to get their patients through they want to fight to get their loved ones through to the end and doctors are in no position to say no so they end up recommending very aggressive treatments at the end of life out of a study of 30,000 patients three-quarters of them were receiving surgeries in chemotherapy in the last three weeks of life and a full 80% of them who were receiving chemotherapy believed that the chemotherapy was going to heal them this is just a failure of our health care system how do we design something better well knowing that we have no understanding of the systems that start to enclose us as we age and I I teamed up with a doctor a palliative care physician named dr. BJ Miller and we're writing a field guide for people to try to help them it's called how to die at the center of this guide is the idea that human centered design can help change our experience there's a trick that designers play you may have heard of it it's called reframing the question what that means is is that instead of asking a really difficult question to answer like how will you face death you zoom out and ask a much more open-ended curious question how might we for dr. Miller and I that question is how might we bring beauty to what is necessary think about it we do that in every other sphere of life we need shelter from the elements especially here in Finland and so our response to that has been architecture we've moved from caves to building great beautiful structures that keep us warm and dry we do this with eating - taking the basic food that nourishes our body and elevated it to cuisine a delight for all of our senses how might we do the same for death it's a good question and we're trying to answer it I do is very curious about how design can shift everyday experiences and so we partnered with the helix Center in London and Sutter Health which is a hospital network in California to launch an open design challenge and the question we posed to the crowd is how might we reimagine the end of life experience for ourselves and our loved ones and I want to show you some of the ideas that came across over a thousand people all over the world participated this woman yoga case and is a japanese-american musician who was terrified by the beeping alarms and the shrill sounds in the hospital and so her answer is to replace it with a more calming sonic environment let's watch the video a while ago I got sick and went to the emergency room I was terrified by the son of alarms is such listeners lying on a hospital bed I wondered why does it have to be this way I started to end this on more human centered sound design for hospitals what if all the alarm sounds are coordinated what if patients and nurses can customize the sound I found sampler what if I tuned some of these into maybe this make it too if measure already this is how money is it's just a tuning of each sound but this is just my idea hospitals more human places places that engage our senses that respect our intelligence that maybe even hold space for joy another one of the ideas that came across was called vicarious and this is a service that connects the living and the dying through a unique experience let's watch this video meet Roger a 76 year old retired history teacher you used to love hiking but has been suffering from Parkinson's disease Roger moved into an assisted living facility just outside of London recognizing a sense of loneliness Roger's caregiver introduces him to vicarious together they captured his dream of biking a Half Dome in Yosemite Maya is a 24 year old barista living in San Francisco an outdoor enthusiast by his love for helping others he leads her to Rogers mission thrilled by their connection Roger and his Viking discuss mission details roger is overjoyed with the completed mission little did they know this was only the start of their unexpected friendship [Music] it's a simple idea everyone in this room has the capacity to design something with impact whether it's for yourselves or your loved ones in this time of life and as we think about solutions for the end of life we're relying on three design principles the first one is to draw a lessons from nature nature is a great teacher so the biologist Tim McGee and Jane Fulton story who works at IDEO have developed a framework called life centered design the idea is in the 300 year life of a big tree the first hundred years are spent growing the second hundred years are spent living and the third hundred years are spent dying but instead of hoarding its assets as the tree dies it expends great energy shedding high-value molecules to the ecosystem around it nourishing everything in its path turns out the last hundred years of a tree's life are its most productive so the question for us becomes how might we be more tree-like in the way we live and die so it's easy to think about giving our stuff away right we all have a bunch of material possessions although actually have you ever tried to give all your stuff away it turns out nobody wants it it's actually quite hard to do but we actually carry much higher value things with us every day one of them is our organs right 13 people die every day waiting on a list for a kidney transplant why don't more people know about this and why can't we make it easier for people to sign up to be donors another thing we carry with us is our stories right the wisdom we accumulate over the course of a life our family stories why can't we give all of that away we take nothing with us the second design principle is to live a life you want to be remembered for so this is Alfred Nobel known for most of his life as being the inventor of dynamite so Alfred was living in France and one morning in 1888 he woke up and was sipping his cafe latte and reading his newspaper and he read this headline The Merchant of death is dead the mashanda mo-mo he kept reading and realised that he was reading his own death notice well it turned out his brother Ludvig had died and there was a mixup at the paper and they ended up writing Alfred's obituary instead and it went on to read something like Alfred Nobel the man who spent his fortune finding more ways to kill people faster died yesterday well of course he was aghast was this what his life amounted to was this what he would be remembered for it's thought that this incident is what got him to set aside the bulk of his fortune to endow the nobel prize now of course he's not known as the merchant of death he's known as a great benefactor now not many of us get such second chances it's hard to cheat time but there's a fun exercise you can do if you want to try write your own obituary it's a great forcing function right to see the arc of your life in a thousand words or less what you did do what you didn't do and it could be a great spur and inspiration are you doing something that's meaningful to you what will you be remembered for in the final design principle is just to give people more control shouldn't people understand what their choices are at the end of life that if they follow a certain path it's likely it will lead them this way or that way one thing we really have no control over is how we're going to die or when but if we hold this idea of impermanence close to us death can be a great teacher at the very least it can show us how to live better so my challenge to all of us when we leave this auditorium and go back to our hotel rooms and back to the people we love is to bring with us a new sense of urgency can we look people in the eye when we say goodbye to them knowing that it may be the last time when you're having a conversation with people can you set aside your phone knowing that you have a short time together let's honor it you are all people with unlimited imagination and a great capacity to build new things and an appetite to improve the world instead of fearing death can we see it as a great gift and can you personally ask yourself these questions one what does quality of life mean to you and have you shared that with anyone - should you not be able to speak for yourself who's going to speak for you and have you told that person and three you all have a massive digital footprint who has access to those accounts have you shared your passwords because let me tell you it is very hard to shut down a big digital life let's also think together about what tools and services we can build to help others make these choices and navigate this time of life 55 million people will die this year we need your imaginative thinking think about it you have a hundred percent market penetration everyone is dying your audience is everyone so thank you for hanging in here with me I know this is a tough topic where we here to talk about innovation and technology I don't know how I snuck in with this and in closing I just want to leave you with one last thought from perhaps our greatest innovator who truly understood the value of death Steve Jobs said remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know of avoiding the trap that you have something to lose you are already naked there's no reason not to follow your heart death may very well be the best invention of life it's life's change agent it clears out the old to make way for the new thank you [Applause]

Channel: Slush

Views: 390

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Slush, Slush 2016, #slush16, tech-heads, Entrepreneur (Profession), Tech Conference, Helsinki, Finland, Start-up, Start-ups, Nordic start-ups, Nordics, Scandinavia, Slush Helsinki, Sauna, Tech, Startup Sauna, tech, Shoshana Berger, IDEO

Id: 21DqUXq4Jwk

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2016