Five years ago, when confronted with the chaos of a hospital floor, Bob Porter, then the president of the SSM DePaul Health Center in St. Louis, called in the designers. Porter forged an unconventional alliance with the California design firm Ideo to redesign wards from a patient's perspective: creating central kiosks for family members to find hospital information easily, streamlining staff communication processes, even redecorating patient rooms to make them feel less clinical and more personal. "Bob's great insight was to apply design thinking and methods to a hospital," says Ideo's Jane Fulton Suri. His efforts have not only earned raves from patients, they have helped boost SSM's bottom line. Over the past five years, DePaul has become the city's fastest-growing hospital. "We're only beginning to fundamentally reexamine how to create a humancentric approach to delivering health care," Porter says.
- Peak Performers: Four masters who are leading the world of design
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- J Mays, VP of Global Design, Ford Motor Co.
- David Kelley, Founder and Chairman, IDEO
- David Macaulay, Author and Illustrator
- Burt Rutan, Founder, President, and CEO, Scaled Composites
- Impact Players: Four high-impact projects that shaped the year in design—and the people who launched them
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- William McDonough, Principal and founder, William McDonough + Partners
- Tom Ford , Former Creative Director, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent
- Jonathan Ive, Vice President of Industrial Design, Apple Computer Inc.
- Marcia Lausen, Founding member, AIGA Design for Democracy
- Game Changers: The risk takers and agitators who are rewriting the rules
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- Adrian Van Hooydonk, President, DesignworksUSA
- Maurice Cox, Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia
- John Maeda, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT
- Arnold Wasserman, Chairman, The Idea Factory
- Collaborators: Champions who help make great design happen
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- Robyn Waters, Founder and president of RW Trend, LLC
- Kun-Hee Lee, Chairman and CEO, Samsung electronics
- Sam Farber, Founder, Copco, OXO, and Wovo
- Bob Porter, Executive Vice President, SSM Health Care
- Next Generation: Meet four rising stars who are charting the future
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- Yves Behar, Founder, fuseproject
- Kathleen Brandenburg, Principal and Cofounder, IA Collaborative
- Geoff McFetridge, Founder, Champion Graphics
- Angela Shen-Hsieh, President and CEO, Visual i/o
- A Jury of Their Peers
- Introducing 11 jurors—top leaders from universities, cultural institutions, and business—who helped us select our 20 Masters of Design.
- Lessons From the Masters
- These five ideas will help you incorporate design principles in your work — and better connect with customers and colleagues.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2004 issue of Fast Company magazine.
