Improving the End-of-Life Care Experience: Mapping experience touchpoints and systems of end-of-life care via material facilitation

Chenfei Yu and Michael Arnold Mages

End-of-life (EOL) care planning is a complex topic that isn’t commonly discussed in daily life. When viewed as an “ecosystem,” the EOL system is shaped by multiple layers of relationships, interactions, and actors—each filled with complex decision-making. EOL conversations are also emotionally and culturally nuanced, and they heavily depend on a person’s evolving needs and desires. In healthcare settings and interactions, healthcare providers continue to face challenges in delivering truly patient-centered care—care that respects autonomy, quality of life, and personal wishes when approaching EOL. To better understand the system surrounding end-of-life experiences, this workshop aims to apply a systemic lens to explore and discuss one’s “imagined” or “envisioned” lived experience of EOL. This is an extended and modified version of a previous workshop facilitated at DRS 2024. It draws on service design principles to guide journey and system mapping through material facilitation. Participants are invited to use material-facilitated methods to lead discussions and mapping exercises—exploring experiences and services—to critique existing EOL-related service infrastructures (particularly within healthcare). These reflections centre on personal meaning, lived experience (e.g., past interactions with EOL care for a loved one), and design perspectives aligned with patient-centred and shared decision-making principles. Participants are encouraged to brainstorm potential systemic solutions to the barriers they identify. Participants are invited to collaboratively explore opportunities for systemic redesign. Outputs from this session contribute to ongoing conversations in systemic design, particularly around healthcare service innovation and human-centred design in spaces where vulnerability and complexity intersect.