Project R-8176

CAREful design methods: investigating multisensory boundaries that facilitate users' feelings of intimacy to improve healthcare servicescapes (Research)

Healthcare services are subject to huge challenges like improving users' experience while being (economically) sustainable. However, little attention has been dedicated on how to create adequate tangible healthcare settings through an optimal architectural design to enhance users' experience and feelings of intimacy. Indeed, hospitals often lack awareness for architectural users' experience and can, in the worst cases, even create visual as well as non-visual disabling situations for users. Recently, Khullar (2017) reported that there is an urgent need to change as "bad hospital design is making us sicker". Accordingly, this study investigates how designers can design "enabling" environments by means of insights in multisensory boundaries to strengthen users' feelings of intimacy. More precisely, focus is put on the search for design methods that support universal designers for linking multisensory user experiences and user goals with design principles. By means of various complementary methodologies (qualitative methodologies such as in-depth interviews and photo-ethnography, but also quantitative methodologies such as experimentations, and field studies) conducted with users with high expectations in terms of design (i.e., visually impaired patients), this study aims to reveal theoretical insights on multisensory boundaries that enable or disable intimacy. Results on how to strengthen intimacy in such strenuous, complex and challenging environments as hospitals, offer the possibility to map the entire range of boundaries for intimacy. Consequently, results could be transferrable to other service sectors.

01 October 2017 - 31 December 2021