Groundswell: Designing Systems of Care for Those Who Care
How a Student-led Design Concept at Carnegie Mellon became a Multilevel Ecosystem for Caregiver Well-being at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital
School of Design
written by
Joe Lyons
At UPMC Magee-Womens Cancer Services, staff navigate a daily reality filled with patient care, emotional labor and moments of profound loss. "Groundswell" — a new dedicated space for reflection and restoration — was designed to meet these caregivers where they are: acknowledging the emotional toll of their work and offering a quiet refuge in the heart of a busy oncology unit.
When oncology staff arrived at Magee-Womens Hospital on October 3, 2025, they encountered more than a new installation. They stepped into the living evolution of a design project that began as a student concept at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design. What started as a classroom exercise has become a 12-month research study and a replicable model for systemic change in healthcare design.
From Classroom Concept to Prototype
"Groundswell" was born out of "Designing with CARE: Co-Creating Solutions for Complex Care Coordination in Oncology," a spring course co-taught by Professor Kristin Hughes in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of Medicine and Nursing. The course explores innovative approaches to gynecologic oncology care, emphasizing how design can drive “small wins” that improve care and advance health equity.
Each student team in the course tackles a real-world challenge identified by care teams. One group was tasked with designing supportive environments that promote staff well-being — spaces where caregivers could safely share experiences of burnout, compassion fatigue, grief following patient deaths and frustration with growing administrative burdens. Fifteen weeks later, the concept for "Groundswell" emerged. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the room when the students finished their presentation,” Hughes recalls.
Over the past two years, Hughes and her University of Pittsburgh collaborators have continued to narrow the gap between classroom exploration and real-world implementation.
"Groundswell" in UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital.
“We work side-by-side with students from concept to implementation, adapting ideas to the real-world context of healthcare systems,” she explains. “This kind of transformative relationship-building is essential for translating complex classroom ideas into real-world impact.”
For Master of Design student Elijah Benzon (MA 2025), the project carried personal weight. Having worked in healthcare shortly after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, he understood the fatigue, loss and chaos that can accumulate without support.
"'Groundswell' allowed me to channel that realization into something tangible," Benzon says, "so that future healthcare workers might have resources to process grief and avoid the chaos I once felt."
Master’s student Lorin Anderberg (MA 2025) came into the course seeking participatory research, co-design practices and deep relational engagement. “I aspire to be a trauma-informed design researcher,” Anderberg explains. “I wanted to explore how design can facilitate well-being, and this project has been everything I hoped for in terms of personal and professional growth.”
Designing a Culture of Care
From the outset, the team immersed themselves in fieldwork — conducting interviews, hosting a generative workshop on grief and workplace culture, and listening closely to stories of burnout and the relentless pace of oncology work. These narratives shaped the authenticity of their approach.
“These conversations amplified our desire to create solutions that would serve care workers in a real and measurable way,” Anderberg says.
An “aha” moment arrived when the team realized that "Groundswell" could become more than a single intervention — it could represent a culture of care.
“She would tell us, ‘String the pearls!’” Anderberg remembers of Hughes’s guidance. “It was about iterating, refining and carving away at something ordinary until it became extraordinary.”
The team soon faced the challenge of translating concept into physical form. With funding from CMU’s College of Fine Arts and the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital Medical Staff Fund, they were given three months to move from vision to installation.
“What started as a big idea with an imaginary budget suddenly needed to fit within the constraints of approvals, protocols and a very restrained budget,” Anderberg says.
CMU alumnus and former Deeplocal COO Greg Baltus, now leading his company Hardware Assembly, joined to fabricate and install the "Groundswell" pod.
“You have to identify the most important elements, test your assumptions, and then physically experience the space,” Baltus explains. “Seating, enclosure, lighting — it all had to come together to create the desired emotional experience.”
Unexpected challenges, like designing a secure door and tracking usage data, pushed the design further. “These challenges ultimately pushed the project forward,” Anderberg says. “We ended up with something adaptable to clinical settings.”
From Installation to Ecosystem
For weeks leading up to launch, an illuminated floral installation quietly glowed on the 4th floor of Magee-Womens Hospital, catching the eyes of staff as they moved between departments. Carefully nestled in a space that once housed telephone booths, the "Groundswell" pod invites all Cancer Services staff to take a moment to restore. That one moment reinforces the message that emotional labor is tangible, visible and shared across the care team.
Next to the pod, a poem reminds staff of their collective strength and humanity:
“Remember your heart.
Remember how it has expanded beyond its borders,
how it has learned to hold both joy and sorrow without breaking…
We come together like water through soil,
a groundswell of quiet strength gathering force.
For what you carry, we all carry.”
Named for water that rises naturally from deep within the earth, Groundswell emerged directly from the voices of healthcare workers, evolving into a four-part ecosystem that integrates design, reflection and data-driven inquiry:
- A restorative pod for emotional decompression through mindfulness activities.
- An updated patient death notification email template with compassionate visuals and language acknowledging the impact of patient loss.
- Guided reflection resources — including physical cards and digital meditations — that promote self-care and emotional regulation.
- A community art wall inviting anonymous expression from anyone connected to cancer care, from nurses to administrators to family caregivers.
“These small interventions can have a positive impact on healthcare workers’ emotional well-being,” says Baltus. “Through considered design and collaboration, formerly underutilized areas of facilities can be energized to support the needs of healthcare workers.”
Design and Medicine in Conversation
This innovation didn’t happen by accident. It grew from relationships built on mutual respect and shared experiences. One such seed was planted in a conversation between Hughes and Dr. Sarah Taylor, a compassionate leader in Gynecologic Oncology at UPMC.
“Caring for people means seeing them as whole, complex and beautiful human beings — not just as patients in need of medicine or surgery,” said Taylor, assistant professor, Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics. “In a world full of moving parts, design helps us navigate that complexity by blending empathy with practicality, creating solutions that speak to the physical, emotional and psychological needs of both those receiving care and those providing it. Burnout in healthcare is widespread, and while wellness tips and tokens of appreciation are needed and valued, they’re not enough. Healthcare workers deserve deeper, sustained support.
“This work is about truly listening, understanding what nurtures their well-being, and designing systems that restore fulfillment and reduce burnout because healing begins with caring for the caregivers.”
From that shared understanding, a lasting collaboration between the School of Design and the University of Pittsburgh took shape — one that bridges design and medicine not as separate disciplines but as complementary languages for empathy, systems thinking and change.
Measuring What Matters
As "Groundswell" moved from installation to research, the design team partnered with Dr. Grace Campbell to align design methodologies with clinical research protocols. “Healthcare is increasingly stressful,” Campbell said. “This pilot project has been an excellent opportunity to merge design thinking with the very real concerns of healthcare professionals about burnout, emotional and physical overload, and grief. We’ve designed the project, the implementation plan and our measures specifically to reflect staff concerns.”
Over the next year, the study will track pod usage, engagement with digital meditations, contributions to the art wall, and staff reflections. The goal is to generate both qualitative and quantitative evidence to inform future iterations and policy-level decisions.
Small reminder cards distributed by department leaders reinforce the project’s core message: it’s okay — and necessary — to pause and reset.
Learning With, Not For
“Designers working within healthcare systems must be prepared to have their assumptions and ideas redirected by the medical community,” Benzon explains. The "Groundswell" team encountered this at every stage — navigating firewalls, software limitations and institutional barriers that shaped what was possible. “Staff expertise at every stage helped us adapt, ensuring our designs could actually operate within the hospital environment,” he adds.
The Groundswell team building the pod.
Anderberg reflects, “While designing within constraints like short timelines, small budgets and institutional barriers challenged our ability to engage as deeply as we would have liked, it was pretty amazing to see how much we were able to accomplish while still centering and amplifying community needs. Because of the relationships built in years prior, our process was able to be guided by community wisdom at every phase.”
Cultivating the Conditions for Change
When design meets systems change and is rooted in relationships, outcomes become more than products — they become symbols of collaboration and seeds for better futures. Rather than siloing expertise, this kind of co-creation allows collaborators to become peers and expands the very definition of design itself.
Samantha Williams, Director of Women's Cancer Services at UPMC, reflects, “'Groundswell' reminds us that caring for patients begins with caring for the people who serve them. By creating intentional spaces and practices that acknowledge the emotional realities of oncology care, we're laying the foundation for a culture where staff well-being is recognized as essential.”
“'Groundswell' is not just a campaign, it's a commitment,” adds Kendyl Grant, director of operations for the Gynecologic Oncology Division at UPMC. “By centering staff-identified well-being priorities, we're ensuring that every voice is heard and concerns are addressed. This initiative reflects our leadership's belief that sustainable change begins with listening to those who live the work every day.”
As the team continues to learn from the study, "Groundswell" stands as both a design intervention and a call to action — a reminder that small, co-created wins can accumulate into systemic transformation.
Acknowledgment
"Groundswell" is a collaboration between the Carnegie Mellon University School of Design, the University of Pittsburgh Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Gynecologic Oncology staff at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, with support from the College of Fine Arts at CMU, the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital Medical Staff Fund, and the Paul D. Schurgot Foundation. Its creation was made possible by an extraordinary community of designers, clinicians and makers united by one goal: to design systems of care that sustain those who provide it.