Meghan Bausone thought she wanted to be a midwife. Now, she’s exploring complex problems in maternal health as part of her Doctor of Design dissertation, using systems thinking to find answers to wicked problems. 

Early in her career, Meghan used her women’s studies and anthropology degrees to prepare for becoming a midwife – she was passionate about the model of practice that supported women in home births. Becoming involved as a founding co-designer with Squat Birth Journal in 2010, she jumped feet-first into graphic design, taking courses at community college until her instructor encouraged her to pursue a formal master’s degree. 

After earning her master’s degree from Kent State, she became a user experience designer for a number of startups. “What I realized was that a lot of the problems that we were trying to solve for, and what I was trying to contribute to as a user experience designer, were more deeply rooted problems,” she said. In trying to solve a problem for somebody, she was looking deeper into organizational and system design, rather than just digital interface problems.

The focus on a larger systems design approach brought doctorate degrees within her radar, and the Doctor of Design (DDes) program within the College of Design was the perfect fit. As a full-time professional, the DDes program allowed her the flexibility of earning her doctorate while still maintaining her career. 

Her experiences are moving full circle, as she refocuses her academic work back on rural maternal health access and how she can apply a systems thinking lens to the issues mothers face in that space. 

“I went into my dissertation knowing that the system [of maternal health] was broken,” Bausone says. “But it’s so broken, some people don’t even feel like they are a part of a system.” She realized that while systems thinking can help map out and understand some of the dynamics of the problem, the issues on the table to be solved are at a deeply human and cultural level that would require a significant paradigm shift, making it what designers often call a “wicked problem.”

As part of her doctoral work, Meghan often talks to those part of the broken system, realizing that many women across the country are falling through the cracks in what are known as maternal healthcare deserts– areas where women aren’t getting prenatal care, postnatal care, or even making it to a hospital in time to have their baby. 

“And we haven’t gotten to the point where we say, ‘we really need to change the system in order to solve the problem,’” she adds. That focus on systems design and exploring ways to tackle large, societal problems led her to interview Professor Richard Buchanan about the Four Orders of Design. 

When she started the DDes program, she didn’t realize the overlap that existed between the design disciplines – graphic design, architectural design, landscape design, interactive design, virtual reality – but the program helped her understand the design theory interwoven through each discipline, and has made her work on the Design Issues editorial board more valuable. 

So when Buchanan invited her to apply for an editorial role on the Design Issues editorial board, Meghan was prepared. Design Issues examines design history, theory and criticism through articles written by professional and scholarly contributors. 

The board collectively reviews submissions for each issue, and being able to understand the design theory, lend her expertise, and recommend suggestions for inclusion has been rewarding to her personal and professional work. 

“When I started the DDes program, I had a narrow view of what design is and can do,” she says. “What I’m really taking away from this program is that design is much bigger and broader than I thought it could be, and the work that I can do in maternal health and other areas is much bigger and broader than what I thought it could be.”

Meghan is now working with a community of professionals with a similar goal of improving the system, ranging from physicians to epidemiologists to medical anthropologists, standing at the forefront of radical change. 

“I didn’t realize until later how intertwined my interest in maternal health was with my development as a designer,” Meghan adds. “But now, I’m unapologetic – it was there all along.”