Immersive Design Process in Healthcare

Imagine trying to understand the complex interaction of people, equipment and technology in a new hospital space by reviewing the architectural blueprints. Now imagine bringing that interaction to life with purposefully design simulations and a rich data set from which to make informed design decisions.

The objective is to close the language gap between architects and healthcare professionals by understanding each other’s world. Enabling a highly agile process between the clinical practice and architects draws on a proven incremental and iterative development model through a series of successive, increasingly refined work sessions. In essence, we are simulating environments in 3D to examine all angles of design with human actions. It starts with critical design thinking through dialogue, sketches, drawings, renderings, VR, 3D models, scripted scenarios and planned simulations.

Immersive design is built on creating real-life scenarios for clinicians to navigate and provide feedback of the initial VR concept design. Using scripted narratives to simulate various medical emergencies and routine patient and clinician interactions, participants are guided through each scenario to articulate their needs, preferences and workflow requirements.

Stakeholders experience the proposed space firsthand to identify areas for improvement and potential issues or risks before construction begins. The process allows the collective team to observe, refine and adapt the design as required.

There is a uniqueness to every environment. The immersive design process helps to make sense of functional design and refine workflow through user-centric, multi-modal simulation by identifying detailed functional needs and by collecting hard data to inform the final design decision.

Rather than training individuals and teams, simulation-informed clinical design makes the system and space the unit of analysis:

• Scenarios are designed to “crash test” common clinical scenarios and weed out latent hazards
• Debriefing sessions gather information on how the system, space and clinical logistics functioned or failed to function‍
• Simulations are video and audio recorded, allowing for subsequent review of movement tracking, “hot zones” (locations where providers tend to congregate or dwell) and bump analysis (how often do team members bump into equipment, or into one another)

The results of this process are impactful in two distinctive ways:

• The systematic and reproducible nature of data gathering helps to codify and quantify known challenges that can be used to drive meaningful design interventions: Data is a more powerful tool than anecdote
• Simulation-informed clinical design shines light on safety hazards that would be impossible to see, because the team is not looking for them