Liran Elbaz Bloch & Zohar Shalev
Design Tools for Every Discipline
liranel@jmc.ac.il | zoharsh@jmc.ac.il
We are senior faculty members in the DAN Department of Inclusive Industrial Design, where we jointly lead the department’s international academic framework. Our work combines academic leadership, applied design research, and active industry practice — and we bring all three into our international collaborations.
Liran is Head of Department and a practicing industrial designer, developing products and communication systems for global companies. Her design work spans broadcast technology, children’s toys, and consumer products. Alongside her industry practice, she leads applied research on inclusive design in clinical settings.
Zohar is the creator of POLARIS, a visual system that simplifies pediatric leukemia treatment protocols, now translated into 30 languages and distributed across 230 hospital centers worldwide under license with Servier Pharmaceuticals. Her work brings medical information design into direct conversation with patient experience and healthcare communication.
Together, we are currently leading a funded interdisciplinary research project examining how user-centered visual information design affects patient knowledge, anxiety, and sense of enablement in optometry clinics - a live example of what happens when inclusive design meets healthcare practice.
What We Offer
Workshop: Design Thinking for Non-Designers
A two-day hands-on workshop for students and faculty from business, engineering, health sciences, or management. Participants work on a real challenge from their own field, moving through the core design thinking cycle: understanding people’s actual needs, defining the problem clearly, generating ideas, and presenting a concrete solution direction. No design background required.
Duration: 2 days × 4 hours
Suitable for: Business, Engineering, Health Sciences, Management, and interdisciplinary programs
Format: Interactive workshop with group work and short fieldwork between sessions
Lecture: When Design Meets Healthcare - Lessons from Live Research
A research-based lecture drawing on our ongoing interdisciplinary study at the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College optometry clinics. The project examines how accessible, visually designed information - developed using inclusive design and co-design methods - affects patients’ knowledge, anxiety, and sense of enablement before and after eye examinations. The lecture shows what happens when design thinking enters a real clinical setting: the process, the methods, the challenges, and early findings.
Duration: 60–90 minutes
Suitable for: All disciplines - particularly health sciences, management, and social sciences
Format: Lecture with Q&A. Can be combined with the workshop above.
Areas of Expertise
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Inclusive and human-centered design
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Design thinking and co-design methodologies
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Healthcare and patient experience design
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Medical information and visual communication
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Industrial design and product development for global markets
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Applied design research
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Studio-based and interdisciplinary design education
International Experience
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Erasmus+ teaching mobility at partner institutions in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, and India
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Lectures and presentations at global conferences across Europe, South America, and the United States
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Collaboration with international medical teams, pharmaceutical partners, and organizations
Open to Collaboration On
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Design thinking in non-design education
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Healthcare innovation and patient communication
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Interdisciplinary research and joint projects
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Student and faculty exchange programs
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Industry-academia partnerships
Contact
Email address:
LinkedIn Profile:
