How can research on patient experience inform hospital design? A case study on improving wayfinding

For patients a hospital visit is a profound experience influenced by their mental and physical state in that moment. Various aspects of the hospital environment play a role in their experience. For most patients communicating about this expe-rience in all its complexity is a difficult task. This difficulty impedes designers' and hospital professionals' insight into patients' perspective on the hospital environ-ment. For this reason we are investigating how research on patient experience can in-form hospital design. In this paper, we explore more specifically (1) how insight in-to patient experience can foster an empathic and motivated understanding amongst healthcare professionals and designers, (2) what kind of information is needed to achieve this, and (3) how their improved understanding impacts on their problem solving ability. To this end, we report on a case study in collabora-tion with a general hospital, with which we organised a series of workshops about improving wayfinding. Bringing together different profiles of designers and healthcare professionals turned out to be an enrichment for all parties involved, even when working within the same organisation. Depending on their profile, participants had different ex-pectations of the format and content of the information presented during the work-shop. Although the workshop was generally evaluated positively, specific attention should be paid to raising realistic expectations about information on patient expe-rience. We found a discrepancy between what research can tell about real pa-tients' experience, what healthcare professionals expect to learn, and what is useful for designers to work with.