Hospital Room
Service Design
Redesigning the patient room experience.
Details in this case study have been obscured to retain client privacy.
Setting the stage
Setting the stage
This project focused on reimagining the hospital room experience to better serve patients, families, and staff. Through a fully remote service design engagement, I identified pain points and opportunities to align hospital operations with patient needs, ultimately delivering a service blueprint and actionable recommendations for improvement.
Challenge
Improve patient hospital room experiences while optimizing space utilization for all users.
Approach
Remote service design engagement using workshops, ethnographic research, and interviews.
Outcome
Service blueprint and actionable recommendations to align front-stage and backstage hospital operations with the patient journey.
Project Goals
Identify pain points across the patient journey.
Align hospital operations with patient touchpoints.
Deliver actionable findings and a service blueprint.
Users
Primary Users: Hospital patients
Secondary Users:
Family, caregivers, and visitors
Physicians, nurses, and therapists
Dietary & environmental services staff
My role
Facilitated 16 interviews with patients, caregivers, and family members.
Coordinated with hospital staff to schedule and conduct interviews.
Synthesized findings and created the service blueprint.
Phase 1: Stakeholder Alignment
Phase 1: Stakeholder Alignment
The problem
Hospitals aim to provide a healing environment, but the patient room experience often falls short due to misaligned operations, unmet needs, and environmental discomforts. The COVID-19 pandemic added another layer of complexity, limiting in-person engagement and requiring innovative research methods.
Research
Vision Workshops
I conducted vision workshops with stakeholders and hospital staff to better understand their processes and pain points.
Findings
Uncovered gaps between front-stage and backstage actions.
Highlighted user pain points and improvement opportunities.
We used an EasyRetro board to capture the responses from the vision workshop activities.
I synthesized the findings from the vision workshop in a MURAL board by grouping together the findings, pain points, opportunities, solutions, and further questions for each area of the hospital room discussed.
*Details have been obscured to retain client privacy.
Phase 2: Research
Phase 2: Research
Ethnographic Research (Artifact Analysis)
Research
A hospital employee captured still images and videos of various hospital rooms, enabling remote study of the space. This artifact analysis served as a guide for secondary research on equipment and as a framework for formulating patient interview questions about the space.
The artifacts were aggregated in a MURAL board so the images could be easily referenced during research. Details have been obscured to retain client privacy.
Research
Secondary Research
As I lacked extensive experience in hospitals, conducting secondary research proved invaluable in building my understanding of hospital room functions. This research became instrumental during the solutioning process, as it provided an overview of potential technological advancements that could be utilized in the future.
This is an image of the document containing the secondary research.
Research
Patient Interviews
I conducted 16 remote interviews with patients and their families to gain firsthand insights into the hospital room experience. These conversations uncovered key pain points related to comfort, communication, and functionality while highlighting emotional aspects of patient care.
By speaking directly with users in their hospital rooms, we captured authentic perspectives essential for driving meaningful improvements.
Findings
Talking to patients in their hospital rooms was crucial for fresh memories and visualizing room elements.
Collaboration with two hospital employees was essential for scheduling interviews.
Being on call during the interview weeks ensured readiness for spontaneous interviews.
Unpredictability of patient schedules was a significant finding.
Group text communication facilitated prompt interview arrangements.
The process was successful due to passionate involvement of hospital employees.
Interviews conducted via Zoom still enabled empathetic connections with participants.
Phase 3: Deliverable
Phase 3: Deliverable
Service Blueprint
Utilizing insights from workshops, ethnographic research, and interviews, I developed a high-level service blueprint. Initially not part of the scope, this visual representation became crucial upon realizing the significant impact of hospital front-stage and back-stage actions on patients, supplementing the findings report.
Service Blueprint
Conclusion
Conclusion
This project underscored the value of empathy and collaboration, even in remote settings. It demonstrated an ability to navigate constraints, engage diverse users, and deliver impactful solutions. The success of the engagement reaffirmed the power of design thinking in addressing complex systems and inspired future opportunities to reimagine healthcare experiences.
Successes & Opportunities
Successes
Remote service design engagement was highly successful overall.
Conducting stakeholder workshops remotely offered greater flexibility for busy participants, like physicians.
Interviews with patients over Zoom in their hospital rooms proved effective.
Cooperation from passionate hospital employees was crucial to project success.
Opportunities
Physical presence in hospital spaces could have provided further insights for findings and recommendations.
Diary studies could have been beneficial to gather research, especially considering the unpredictability of patient schedules, potentially revealing patterns within patient stays.