Project 4

Wayfinding in Sick Kids Hospital Emergency

Client

Sick Kids Hospital

Sector

Design Research, Healthcare, Interior, Wayfinding

Responsibilities

Design Researcher

Project Duration

3 months

The focus on patient flow through space leverages the concept of environmental legibility and intuitive movement. Patient orientation and wayfinding looks at how we problem solve spatially through intellectual abilities like decision making, execution and information processing. Wayfinding strategies complement the built structure to support human behaviour, account for psychological aspects in emergency situations and provide information to aid the process of knowing where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. A successful wayfinding system must consider the entire patient journey from start to finish and back again. Touchpoints were identified and personas were created to represent various journeys to the Sick Kids emergency department, as well as observations made on-site to inform spatial analyses.

A peek into my process

Interventions were designed using a scaled approach, defined by factors such as cost, resources required, operational interruptions and timeline. These factors were recognized to play a big role in the implementation of any changes, therefore possibilities were identified in each level. The scales were to be viewed as layered approaches, where if a low level package was to be implemented, the medium and high levels can be layered on to essentially upgrade the system.