Beyond the data: Why lived experience matters in mental health design

How does it actually feel to be in an environment when you’re experiencing mental ill health? And how do we discover the unintended consequences that might never appear in a specification or dataset?

For Dan Steers, the answer lies in something he calls “soft intelligence” the insight that comes from listening to people’s experiences.

The things data can’t always tell us

Dan works across mental health services and beyond, bringing lived experience into research, improvement, engagement and decision-making.

He is a strong advocate for evidence and professional expertise. But he believes something important can be missed when they are considered without the experience of the people behind the numbers. “You can learn so much more if you look at them side by side.”

Hard data can tell us what is happening. Lived experience can help us understand what that experience actually means for a person.

Dan uses healthcare targets as an example. A service might successfully meet a target for making initial contact with someone. On paper, that target has been achieved. But if the person then waits months for meaningful treatment to begin, their experience tells us something the initial measure cannot. Neither perspective necessarily makes the other wrong. Together, they create a fuller picture and the same principle can be applied to the physical environment.

Are we consulting or genuinely listening?

One of the most thought-provoking parts of our conversation with Dan was the distinction between consultation and co-production.

They can sound similar but in practice, there is a difference between asking: “We’ve designed this. What do you think?” and asking: “What are you experiencing? What isn’t working? What problem should we be trying to solve?”

The first can provide useful feedback. The second has the potential to influence the thinking before the answer has already been decided.

Lived experience doesn’t replace expertise

There is an important distinction here. Listening to lived experience doesn’t mean replacing designers, clinicians, occupational therapists, estates teams or other healthcare professionals.

Nor should we expect someone with lived experience to automatically have the technical solution to every problem they identify. Dan’s argument is about bringing different forms of expertise together.

None sees everything. Together, they can see considerably more.

For Dan, the important principle is that those voices are able to contribute meaningfully rather than one automatically carrying more weight because of a job title, qualification or professional status.

There is no single mental health experience

Perhaps this becomes even more important when we recognise how broad the term “mental health” really is.

An older adult mental health ward is not the same as a working-age inpatient unit.

A community mental health setting isn’t the same as a secure environment.

A person experiencing psychosis may experience their surroundings differently from somebody experiencing depression, anxiety, dementia or sensory overwhelm.

People also bring different physical abilities, neurodivergence, cultures, histories and preferences into the same environment.

So the question cannot simply be: “Does this work for mental health?”

It needs to go further. Who is using it? Where? What might they be experiencing? What do they need from this environment?

During our conversation, Dan described the environment as one part of a much larger jigsaw but also a large part of the recovery picture.

From designing for people to designing with people

Dan believes organisations have an opportunity to go further than simply gathering occasional feedback.

His suggestion is multidisciplinary involvement: bringing together lived experience, carers, designers and professionals so that different perspectives can inform decisions together.

There is also a responsibility attached to that. If we describe lived experience as expertise, Dan argues, we should treat it accordingly. That means respecting people’s time and contribution. It means recognising that participation may need to be flexible. It means being prepared to hear answers that challenge our thinking. And where people are contributing meaningful expertise to professional work, it means properly recognising the value of that contribution. Because listening isn’t simply giving somebody the opportunity to speak. It’s being prepared for what they say to influence what happens next. A question worth carrying forward

Good design isn’t only about asking whether we’ve solved the problem. It’s about asking what the solution feels like for the people living with it.

World Mental Health Day creates an important opportunity to talk about mental health. Perhaps it also gives us an opportunity to think about how we talk about it.

For organisations involved in creating healthcare environments, the challenge isn’t to claim that we know exactly what every person needs. It’s quite the opposite. It’s to remain curious enough to ask. What aren’t we seeing? Whose perspective could change our understanding? What does the evidence tell us and what doesn’t it tell us? What might the experience look like from the other side of the room? And who should be sitting around the table before decisions are made?

At Teal, we believe better healthcare environments begin with understanding the people who experience them. Dan’s perspective is an important reminder that some of the most valuable insight doesn’t necessarily arrive as a statistic.

Sometimes, it starts with a conversation.

Dan Steers is a lived experience, mental health and neurodiversity adviser, working across involvement, engagement, research and service improvement.

Our thanks to Dan for generously sharing his experiences, expertise and perspective with Teal for World Mental Health Day 2026