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Most models of health start with conditions, symptoms, behaviours, or outcomes.

Umio Design for Real Lived Experience (RLX) begins somewhere else: with the felt, relational, and unfolding reality of life as it is lived.

We don’t reduce people to diagnoses, data points, or demographic types.

We work with the full depth of human experience - including pain, joy, transition, care, constraint, and transformation.

Grounded in lived expertise and relational philosophy, Design for RLX is a method and mindset for uncovering the real content and nature of experience - across body, mind, environment, memory, relation, and material life.

Whether you’re designing for chronic illness, mental health, public systems, technologies, or care innovation, Design for RLX helps you perceive what’s really there - and help change it. 

Services

We offer bespoke services, research, and educational programs that help enterprises, teams, and communities design with the real, lived dynamics of health, illness, and human transformation.

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Real Lived Experience Research and Insight
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Relational Consulting
Expressive Design
Expressive Design Projects
Co-Composition Labs
Co-Composition Labs
Speaking Writing and Thought Partnership
Education and Practice Development
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Speaking, Writing and Thought Partnership

All services are grounded in the principles of Design for RLX - a methodology that perceives health not as a fixed category, but as a relational, unfolding process of real lived experience.

Seeking new paths to health design, value and impact? Umio is for ... 

Health and Care Innovators

Health and Care Enterprises

Clinicians, Therapists, Counsellors

Public Health Creators

Community Leaders

Public Policy and Social Researchers

Architects and Urban Designers

UX, Service, and Experience Designers

Academics and Educators

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Umio Bergson
AI for Experiential Intelligence
 

Bergson is our transformative app that provides unparalleled deep insight into the real lived experience of any health condition,  illness, or disability, anywhere in the world.

it empowers you to uncover the dynamic, interconnected feelings, factors and forces that shape human lives and health - giving you deep insights and a novel means to inspire change, design with purpose, and create real impact.

Umio Bergson Applications and Content

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Reveal the hidden lived experience of any health or other condition ... anywhere in the world (including multi-conditions)

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Discover hard-to-see differences and movements in any lived experience - get beyond outcomes and numbers

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Learn the tendencies of health thought, design, innovation and practice that can limit creativity

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Create first-person narratives and hi-res images that bring any real lived experience to life

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Generate hundreds of experience and ecosystem-level ideas and concepts for a specific purpose, mission or problem

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Reveal new forms of lived experience policy, strategy and stakeholder engagement tailored to your enterprise

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Develop your research and design skills using the integrated Umio Health Ecosystem Value Design templates

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Get ongoing support and briefings on how to get the most of Bergson and its underlying models and principles

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Includes exclusive member access to all Umio papers, infographics, blog and other resources

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Our radical thinking and methods deploy a breakthrough perspective on lived experience, challenge status quo thinking, capture original insights, and facilitate impactful learning, design and value-creation ... in any applied health or wider experience context ... anywhere.

Watch our introductory film - Stuck! 

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Get to know Umio thinking and framework: Buy the book

Umio founder Chris Lawer's book, "Interactional Creation of Health: Experience Ecosystem Ontology, Task and Method," introduces our comprehensive framework for understanding and improving health through an experience-centred ecosystem approach. Written during lockdown, Chris proposes a shift from traditional health models to a more integrated and whole view, focusing on the dynamic interactions within various domains of lived or real experience. Here are the key aspects of the book and Umio framework:

Health Ecosystem Value Design (HEVD) Framework: Lawer presents a revised version of his HEVD framework, which is built on seven foundational principles. These foundations help in understanding the complex flows and forces that shape experiences of health, disease, and illness over time.

Four Interactional Domains: The model identifies four primary domains: bodily-motor, perceptual-cognitive, social-cultural, and material-spatial. Each domain includes various entities and mechanisms that interact to form lived health experiences. This approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of different factors influencing health.

Twelve-Step Method: The book provides a structured method for practitioners to analyze and improve health experiences. This method includes detailed templates and guidelines for conducting inquiries and implementing actions within health experience ecosystems. The aim is to enhance capacities in health systems for achieving valuable developmental impacts.

Action Spaces: Lawer outlines the concept of "action spaces" which are strategic areas for intervention. These spaces focus on addressing the origins of health issues, changing perceptions and beliefs, determining differences in lived experiences, and designing multi-dimensional strategies to create desired health outcomes. This involves integrating traditional and non-traditional actors and leveraging various technologies and services.

Holistic and Unified Model: The book advocates for a model that encompasses all aspects of health experiences, emphasizing the importance of understanding how different elements interact to form and sustain health over time. This holistic view aims to reveal hidden possibilities for creating health and preventing or recovering from disease.

Overall, "Interactional Creation of Health" aims to provide a new paradigm for health systems, encouraging a more dynamic and interconnected approach to health that can better address the complexities of lived experiences. This framework is designed to be applicable across various contexts, from individual health experiences to broader community and population health initiatives.

Access framework templates

Umio Marketing Version HEVD 2.0 Master Templates October 2024

Recent blogs

Latest resources

Transforming the Real Experience of UK Armed Forces Veterans Living with Chronic Pain -2
Transforming the real experience of UK armed forces veterans living with chronic pain

This major report presents Umio’s concepts and qualitative research into UK armed forces veteran experiences with chronic pain. It is one deliverable from our 12-month project with the UK Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA).

A Critique of the Social Determinants of Health Framework and the Real Experience Alternative
A critique of the social determinants of health framework

Despite almost universal agreement on the importance of addressing the social determinants of health, the dominant logic and frameworks for doing so suffer from some important limitations. In this paper, we offer a critique and alternative.

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The creation of concrete real experience: Perception, affect, duration and emotion 

In this paper, we explain the nature, formation, and differentiation of concrete real experience. It defines affect and how it differs from emotion, and explains a process for how real lived experiences form, differ and persist.

Book a two-hour consultation image
Book a two-hour consultation
£400.00

Explore our acclaimed Health Ecosystem Value Design® framework applied to a health and/or social context or contexts of your choice.  Share any relevant documentation before the consultation, then obtain a tailored briefing of how your enterprise can drive all-win-more value and impacts, centred on our radical new framing and models of real lived experience and health/care ecosystems. After the consultation, obtain a one-page written summary of how to begin realising the possibilities we explored. Total consultation time of 2 hours.

Testimonials

"Umio’s re-conception of experience and value provides the breakthrough thinking that healthcare and related systems need to repurpose resources and transform delivery."

Prof. Neal Halfon, inventor of the Lifecourse Health Framework

"The Umio framework is comprehensive and just what we need to help deal with the complexities of health as we learn to value differences and activate capacities."

Daniel Pesut, Emeritus Professor Minnesota School of Nursing

"Masterful .. outstanding .. detailed what and how framework for embracing a dynamic creational .. view based on whole lived experiences."

Prof. Venkat Ramaswamy, author of The Co-creation Paradigm

Start your journey to wider health impact today