Innovation Project: HOSPITAL WAIT TIME ALLEVIATION Arash Afshar Larissa DeHaas Samuel Kuniholm Jason Smith
May 3, 2012 INTRODUCTION The alleviation of the hospital wait time project truly began when we, as a group, began to use our own personal experiences as a reference for where an innovative product is needed. As we worked through the personal necessities project we noticed how there are constant innovations that are developed that contribute to the way personal necessities are carried. This is not unique to backpacks and purses; consumers will always be interested in new innovations for any type of product or service. However, the consumption side of our economy and culture may not always need these innovations, and the experiences from those products may not have as profound significance as other experiences may. This is where we realized the hospital is a sector that does not have as many innovators working to alleviate some of the difficulties associated with the hospital’s overall experience. Since we were unable to change the overall hospital experience, we realized that the waiting room is an area where all patients and guests begin their visit. The waiting room experience sets the tone for the rest of the visitor’s time at the hospital. Therefore, as mostly everyone has to encounter a waiting room at least once, we sought to alleviate the problems of agitation, boredom, and overall nervous anticipation. EMPATHY As the design thinking process works to engage the innovators to truly create a meaningful project, the first step is to empathize with the user and interact with the users to be able to fully encompass their experience. There were two of us within the group who had been frequently visiting the hospital recently and were able to provide the group with their own experience. While we could have begun forming ideas upon their experiences, we realized that to fully develop a picture of the experience we would have to conduct interviews, and we would need visit the hospital together and follow the user experience at the Salem Hospital. We had a hard time narrowing down the center focus of the hospital experience that we wanted to improve. We spent time brainstorming about the general design, parking, layout, and the attention to detail that the nurses gave each individual patient. However, we realized that the most time a person will spend in a hospital will be in the waiting rooms. Therefore, it is one of the important places for a user to be able to have a positive experience and the place for the initial feeling associated with the visit to develop. The earlier introduction to the Salem Hospital’s waiting rooms provided us with an overall sense of the type of questions we needed to answer in order to develop an overall picture of multiple experiences. After we all conducted our own interviews focusing on waiting room individuals, waiting room area staff, and Willamette students we shared our notes and allowed everyone to read over them alone. This allowed us to all create our own separate realizations, and allow each of us to find different anomalies from the set of interviews. When coming back together to discuss the notes we were able to note the differences among the interviews, and consider the multiple similarities which we found among all the demographics of our interviewees.
DEFINE After our insights we were able to formulate “how might we” statements, which were able to provide us with the best amount of insight. We realize now that our composite character might have limited our ideate process because we did not create multiple composite characters that comprised both extremes of the spectrum. While the composite character should focus on the similarities found between interviews, we think that sometimes being able to understand the extremes provides insight into what makes the middle ground. We made one composite character, and we were able to expand our focus by creating “how might we questions” specifically for this type of person. These were the strengths of our define phase that enabled us to ideate. The following were our “how might we” questions: · How might we provide distraction for those in the waiting room to ease the wait time, and distract those waiting from their anxiety? · How might we increase the friendliness of the waiting room atmosphere? · How might we create a more comfortable sitting arrangement? · How might we design one product that eliminates boredom and anxiety together? · How might we focus on creating a repeatable positive waiting room experience? · How might we make the waiting room feel like a more private, and homelike atmosphere?
IDEATE We found drawings to be a great way for us to step out of the define process, and the lists we had been making, and to truly ideate. The waiting room situation was a 3D problem, and involving sketches was a great way for us to be able to see an innovation within the waiting room area. We had many ideas and used our ideate process to formulate three ideas from our how might we questions. These questions provided us with the framework to be able to fully conceptualize the ability of our idea to engage the user into a new waiting room experience.
Our three ideas were a tablet table, an arboretum, and a waiting time beeper. We were most excited about the arboretum initially; however, there were certain considerations that we had to address first. After considering the feasibility and innovation of each product, along with which idea was most likely to appeal to a majority, we decided that we should prototype the tablet table. After comparing the sketches and ideas, we decided on two prototypes to begin to build due to the feasibility of actually building a standing model, and also how aesthetically pleasing they would be within a hospital setting. We focused on the enveloping idea of a tablet station within the waiting rooms that would be able to use technology to suit a majority of the waiting room individuals.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that Prototype A could be a kiosk that an individual could sit at privately. The tablet face would be at chest level, with the neck of the kiosk designed to be adjustable for a range of heights. The base of the kiosk would be securely fastened to the floor of the hospital waiting room. Our second prototype (Prototype B) was designed to more space conducive and less designed for private interaction for the individual. This was the tablet table. It would be designed to demonstrate an average table that could seat up to four individuals with tablets securely adjoined to the table surface. The idea was that people could sit at a table as they normally would with a tablet or laptop, but it would securely fastened so that people could not damage or steal it. In the next section we will explain what our interviewees thought of our ideas.
PROTOTYPE & TEST We were excited about the prototyping process because it allowed us to fully conceptualize our ideas and see if they would be able to work within the waiting room setting. The major message we gained from our interviews that boredom within the waiting room caused more stress and anxiety throughout the entire hospital experience. Therefore, by designing a product that provided distraction or involved the waiting room users, we found that this would eliminate this initial negative connotation. Prototype A To create this prototype we measured out dimensions for a seated person, and then cut pieces of wood to fit a curved dimension of these dimensions. We thought the curved design would allow for easy fitting in an adjustable feature, and was also more aesthetically pleasing. We used a kindle fire as the example tablet, due to the easy and cheap accessibility the kindle fire has for magazine subscriptions, and also the overall focus of the kindle on books. Prototype B The tablet kiosk focused on fitting the person both dimensionally and individually, so for our second prototype we created a small scale table version of the tablet idea. This had four tablets painted onto the table. Testing We conducted testing on many sectors of people, both those whom we had interviewed previously (allowing us to account for their hospital experience, and therefore have knowledge about what would potentially work) and those who we randomly chose (Due to hospital confidentiality we were unable to test our prototypes within the waiting room setting). This worked out great providing us with ample feedback from multiple sides. Some people found exact ways of improving the prototype solely to function in a hospital waiting room. Others took our idea and brainstormed about how to implement this tablet idea within multiple different types of waiting rooms. We also found value in conducting testing with both prototypes, allowing for comparisons between the two. Some of our greatest innovations for the final prototype came from these comparisons. Throughout the testing period, we learned the value people place on privacy and comfort while in the hospital waiting room. While our table prototype would help remedy the boredom and anxiety problems people are experiencing, it overlooks the other problems of sanitation, and privacy. For these reasons our kiosk prototype is shown to be a better alternative than the table model. We clearly saw the value of creating multiple prototypes when testing a product idea. People are more likely to express what they don’t like about a prototype if they have an alternative that is also presented to them. Moving forward with this project, we will discard the table idea and seek further feedback in revising the kiosk prototype until it has become as practical and valuable to those in hospital waiting rooms as possible.
One of the major areas where we would be able to implement another innovation would be within the programming of the tablet. We received a lot of feedback of having the tablet kiosk station not only be for reading materials, but also to provide people with patient information, further wait time limit, and an encyclopedia of medical terms or prescriptions in order to allow the people to educate themselves while waiting. This would have to be created with lots of cooperation from the hospital, and the hospital staff. This would be a great leap, however, in the entire design of the tablet kiosk. Actually creating this for patients or those in hospital waiting rooms would be a truly unique and innovative product.
CONCLUSION Every stage of our design thinking process provided us with further insight not only into creating an innovating but how every experience in our lives leaves us with a either a positive or negative association with a place. While there are many new innovations that involve entirely new products, we did not use that as our focus for creation here. We simply identified an area where many people who have been to hospitals on a regular basis would like to see improvement. This is an innovation entirely targeting at improving one’s experience in an unfortunate time as much as possible to alleviate anxiety, distress and boredom. We are excited about the accessibility and the feasibility of our product. While we have established the final steps into creating our product to be reality, we look forward to utilizing websites such as Quirky, or other design thinkers from our class to provide us with a marketable product. We also realize that we will need an adept software programmer to bounce ideas off of when we begin to create a usable interface and program for the hospital tablet. While we currently do not intend to pursue this product as a basis for starting a business, we found the exercise of methodically solving a problem valuable. The design thinking process is a powerful tool that, as long as you’re able to devote the time and effort, can be used to solve almost any problem.
Arash Afshar
Larissa DeHaas
Samuel Kuniholm
Jason Smith
May 3, 2012
INTRODUCTION
The alleviation of the hospital wait time project truly began when we, as a group, began to use our own personal experiences as a reference for where an innovative product is needed. As we worked through the personal necessities project we noticed how there are constant innovations that are developed that contribute to the way personal necessities are carried. This is not unique to backpacks and purses; consumers will always be interested in new innovations for any type of product or service. However, the consumption side of our economy and culture may not always need these innovations, and the experiences from those products may not have as profound significance as other experiences may.
This is where we realized the hospital is a sector that does not have as many innovators working to alleviate some of the difficulties associated with the hospital’s overall experience. Since we were unable to change the overall hospital experience, we realized that the waiting room is an area where all patients and guests begin their visit. The waiting room experience sets the tone for the rest of the visitor’s time at the hospital. Therefore, as mostly everyone has to encounter a waiting room at least once, we sought to alleviate the problems of agitation, boredom, and overall nervous anticipation.
EMPATHY
As the design thinking process works to engage the innovators to truly create a meaningful project, the first step is to empathize with the user and interact with the users to be able to fully encompass their experience. There were two of us within the group who had been frequently visiting the hospital recently and were able to provide the group with their own experience. While we could have begun forming ideas upon their experiences, we realized that to fully develop a picture of the experience we would have to conduct interviews, and we would need visit the hospital together and follow the user experience at the Salem Hospital.
We had a hard time narrowing down the center focus of the hospital experience that we wanted to improve. We spent time brainstorming about the general design, parking, layout, and the attention to detail that the nurses gave each individual patient. However, we realized that the most time a person will spend in a hospital will be in the waiting rooms. Therefore, it is one of the important places for a user to be able to have a positive experience and the place for the initial feeling associated with the visit to develop. The earlier introduction to the Salem Hospital’s waiting rooms provided us with an overall sense of the type of questions we needed to answer in order to develop an overall picture of multiple experiences.
After we all conducted our own interviews focusing on waiting room individuals, waiting room area staff, and Willamette students we shared our notes and allowed everyone to read over them alone. This allowed us to all create our own separate realizations, and allow each of us to find different anomalies from the set of interviews. When coming back together to discuss the notes we were able to note the differences among the interviews, and consider the multiple similarities which we found among all the demographics of our interviewees.
DEFINE
After our insights we were able to formulate “how might we” statements, which were able to provide us with the best amount of insight. We realize now that our composite character might have limited our ideate process because we did not create multiple composite characters that comprised both extremes of the spectrum. While the composite character should focus on the similarities found between interviews, we think that sometimes being able to understand the extremes provides insight into what makes the middle ground. We made one composite character, and we were able to expand our focus by creating “how might we questions” specifically for this type of person. These were the strengths of our define phase that enabled us to ideate.
The following were our “how might we” questions:
· How might we provide distraction for those in the waiting room to ease the wait time, and distract those waiting from their anxiety?
· How might we increase the friendliness of the waiting room atmosphere?
· How might we create a more comfortable sitting arrangement?
· How might we design one product that eliminates boredom and anxiety together?
· How might we focus on creating a repeatable positive waiting room experience?
· How might we make the waiting room feel like a more private, and homelike atmosphere?
IDEATE
We found drawings to be a great way for us to step out of the define process, and the lists we had been making, and to truly ideate. The waiting room situation was a 3D problem, and involving sketches was a great way for us to be able to see an innovation within the waiting room area. We had many ideas and used our ideate process to formulate three ideas from our how might we questions. These questions provided us with the framework to be able to fully conceptualize the ability of our idea to engage the user into a new waiting room experience.
Our three ideas were a tablet table, an arboretum, and a waiting time beeper. We were most excited about the arboretum initially; however, there were certain considerations that we had to address first. After considering the feasibility and innovation of each product, along with which idea was most likely to appeal to a majority, we decided that we should prototype the tablet table. After comparing the sketches and ideas, we decided on two prototypes to begin to build due to the feasibility of actually building a standing model, and also how aesthetically pleasing they would be within a hospital setting. We focused on the enveloping idea of a tablet station within the waiting rooms that would be able to use technology to suit a majority of the waiting room individuals.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that Prototype A could be a kiosk that an individual could sit at privately. The tablet face would be at chest level, with the neck of the kiosk designed to be adjustable for a range of heights. The base of the kiosk would be securely fastened to the floor of the hospital waiting room.
Our second prototype (Prototype B) was designed to more space conducive and less designed for private interaction for the individual. This was the tablet table. It would be designed to demonstrate an average table that could seat up to four individuals with tablets securely adjoined to the table surface. The idea was that people could sit at a table as they normally would with a tablet or laptop, but it would securely fastened so that people could not damage or steal it. In the next section we will explain what our interviewees thought of our ideas.
PROTOTYPE & TEST
We were excited about the prototyping process because it allowed us to fully conceptualize our ideas and see if they would be able to work within the waiting room setting. The major message we gained from our interviews that boredom within the waiting room caused more stress and anxiety throughout the entire hospital experience. Therefore, by designing a product that provided distraction or involved the waiting room users, we found that this would eliminate this initial negative connotation.
Prototype A
To create this prototype we measured out dimensions for a seated person, and then cut pieces of wood to fit a curved dimension of these dimensions. We thought the curved design would allow for easy fitting in an adjustable feature, and was also more aesthetically pleasing. We used a kindle fire as the example tablet, due to the easy and cheap accessibility the kindle fire has for magazine subscriptions, and also the overall focus of the kindle on books.
Prototype B
The tablet kiosk focused on fitting the person both dimensionally and individually, so for our second prototype we created a small scale table version of the tablet idea. This had four tablets painted onto the table.
Testing
We conducted testing on many sectors of people, both those whom we had interviewed previously (allowing us to account for their hospital experience, and therefore have knowledge about what would potentially work) and those who we randomly chose (Due to hospital confidentiality we were unable to test our prototypes within the waiting room setting). This worked out great providing us with ample feedback from multiple sides. Some people found exact ways of improving the prototype solely to function in a hospital waiting room. Others took our idea and brainstormed about how to implement this tablet idea within multiple different types of waiting rooms. We also found value in conducting testing with both prototypes, allowing for comparisons between the two. Some of our greatest innovations for the final prototype came from these comparisons.
Throughout the testing period, we learned the value people place on privacy and comfort while in the hospital waiting room. While our table prototype would help remedy the boredom and anxiety problems people are experiencing, it overlooks the other problems of sanitation, and privacy. For these reasons our kiosk prototype is shown to be a better alternative than the table model. We clearly saw the value of creating multiple prototypes when testing a product idea. People are more likely to express what they don’t like about a prototype if they have an alternative that is also presented to them. Moving forward with this project, we will discard the table idea and seek further feedback in revising the kiosk prototype until it has become as practical and valuable to those in hospital waiting rooms as possible.
One of the major areas where we would be able to implement another innovation would be within the programming of the tablet. We received a lot of feedback of having the tablet kiosk station not only be for reading materials, but also to provide people with patient information, further wait time limit, and an encyclopedia of medical terms or prescriptions in order to allow the people to educate themselves while waiting. This would have to be created with lots of cooperation from the hospital, and the hospital staff. This would be a great leap, however, in the entire design of the tablet kiosk. Actually creating this for patients or those in hospital waiting rooms would be a truly unique and innovative product.
CONCLUSION
Every stage of our design thinking process provided us with further insight not only into creating an innovating but how every experience in our lives leaves us with a either a positive or negative association with a place. While there are many new innovations that involve entirely new products, we did not use that as our focus for creation here. We simply identified an area where many people who have been to hospitals on a regular basis would like to see improvement. This is an innovation entirely targeting at improving one’s experience in an unfortunate time as much as possible to alleviate anxiety, distress and boredom.
We are excited about the accessibility and the feasibility of our product. While we have established the final steps into creating our product to be reality, we look forward to utilizing websites such as Quirky, or other design thinkers from our class to provide us with a marketable product. We also realize that we will need an adept software programmer to bounce ideas off of when we begin to create a usable interface and program for the hospital tablet. While we currently do not intend to pursue this product as a basis for starting a business, we found the exercise of methodically solving a problem valuable. The design thinking process is a powerful tool that, as long as you’re able to devote the time and effort, can be used to solve almost any problem.