Wayfinding for health seeking: Exploring how hospital wayfinding can employ communication design to improve the outpatient experience

Abstract

This project explores how a design-led approach can be used to improve health seekers' wayfinding experiences within a public hospital. It questions how communication design might support and empower wayfinding health seekers. Whilst addressing physical wellness, hospitals often overlook the high levels of stress, anxiety and uncertainty that come with this particular environment. Currently within healthcare, there is an institutional shift toward providing patientcentred care, so that the patient's voice can be heard in the process of designing services and solutions. The vulnerabilities of health seekers within healthcare contexts mean that there is a greater need for meaningful communication. A Children's Outpatient Department was used as an environment to explore the challenges that people face when negotiating complex environments when the attention is focused on their own, or their family's healthcare journeys. By constraining the research initially to a specific location, full-scale in-situ prototypes were able to be installed to enhance engagement with design research and help generate deeper insights around wayfinding contexts. Thus a holistic approach to outpatient wayfinding was able to be developed, that emphasised the broader healthcare experience of the individual, and demonstrated how a design solution may support and guide this journey. Rather than investigating the environment in isolation, there was a consideration of multiple channels of wayfinding communication. These channels are crucial to prepare and support wayfinding at different stages within a journey. Wayfinding solutions should aim to empower health seekers by communicating information in ways that enable confidence and informed decision-making. The designed wayfinding solutions demonstrate the importance of cohesive and staggered information that reflects the health-seeking journey. Throughout the development and testing of these solutions, there was an S2551 EDEN JAYNE SHORT, STEPHEN REAY, PETER GILDERDALE emergent need to emphasis the supporter role (parents and caregivers) when health seeking in a children's outpatient environment due to the complexity of wayfinding tasks. Stakeholder relationships were critically important in undertaking this design-led research and testing the feasibility of designed solutions. Through probes, prototyping and project collaboration, the designs produced were able to respond to real problems, to test assumptions and validate the need for change in ongoing wayfinding projects within hospital environments.

Waiting Room Physical Environment and Outpatient Experience: The Spatial User Experience Model as Analytical Tool

“…These results suggest that waiting room design should focus on supporting users cognitively (wayfinding and orientation in the process), physically (comfort, physical fit between user and furniture, accessibility conditions), and affectively (attractive design, maintenance, positive emotions) to improve the experience of the waiting room visitors. These results correspond with previous findings in terms of the relevance of wayfinding for services and the waiting room (Bonfanti et al, 2017;Lee, 2011;Short et al, 2017;Ulrich et al, 2008), physical comfort in the waiting room (Arneill & Devlin, 2002;Catania et al, 2011;Cusack et al, 2010;Lee, 2011); the impact of waiting room attractiveness (Arneill & Devlin, 2002;Beukeboom et al, 2012;Leather et al, 2003;Lee, 2011); and emotional response toward the environment (Beukeboom et al, 2012;Laursen et al, 2014).…”

“…Yet, Danaher and Gallan (2016) suggest that the impact of the physical environment on the patient experience still needs further research. Whereas investigators addressed the environmental effects of healthcare facilities on inpatients (Becker & Douglass, 2008;Figueroa, 2016;Laursen et al, 2014;Ulrich et al, 2008), outpatient services have gained relevance in the healthcare industry (Short et al, 2017), opening new research opportunities.…”

A bibliometric analysis of published literature on healthcare facilities' wayfinding research from 1974 to 2020

“…Research has also been conducted to create user-centered mobile application designs for hospital wayfinding systems (Harper et al, 2020;Harper et al, 2020). Indoor positioning in hospitals through mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) (Hou et al, 2018) and improved hospital signage design can help solve people's wayfinding problems (Eden Jayne Short et al, 2017;Eden J. Short et al, 2019).…”