Immersing the artist and designer in the needs of the clinician: evolving the brief for distraction and stress reduction in a new Child Protection Unit.

Fremantle, Chris; Hepburn, Leigh-Anne; Hamilton, Alexander; Sands, Jackie

Abstract

Engaging clinicians in the design of new, less stressful spaces in healthcare is an interdisciplinary challenge for artists and designers. The design brief is the primary means of ensuring shared understanding and success criteria for creative projects (Press and Cooper 2003) and highlights ambitions and constraints for the project. Conventionally the brief is prepared by the client and issued to the artist or designer. This assumes that the client knows at the outset how to articulate needs and is able to envisage the outcome. Alternative processes emerging through co-design and interdisciplinary working assume the brief is developed or evolved jointly as part of the process and is focused on the experience of the user. This paper focuses on the evolution of a meaningful brief for a Child Protection Unit in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s new Royal Hospital for Children. Development of the brief was driven by the art and design team and aimed at opening up mutual understanding with the clinicians. The visual mapping of dialogue between artist, interactive designer and clinicians provides a novel approach to understanding this key stage of the process. Fremantle co-ordinated the paper. Hepburn undertook the fieldwork and provided the analysis. Fremantle structured the paper and co-ordinated reviews with Hamilton and Sands.

Citation

FREMANTLE, C., HEPBURN, L-A., HAMILTON, A. and SANDS, J. 2015. Immersing the artist and designer in the needs of the clinician: evolving the brief for distraction and stress reduction in a new Child Protection Unit. In Christer, K. (ed.) Proceedings of the 3rd European conference on Design4Health 2015, 13-16 July 2015, Sheffield, UK. Sheffield; Sheffield Hallam University [online], pages 1-10. Available from: http://research.shu.ac.uk/design4health/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/D4H_Fremantle_et_al.pdf

• Conference Name: 3rd European conference on Design4Health 2015
• Conference Location: Sheffield, UK
• Start Date: Jul 13, 2015
• End Date: Jul 16, 2015
• Acceptance Date: Jan 26, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jul 13, 2015
• Publication Date: Jul 16, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 12, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 12, 2016
• Publisher: Sheffield Hallam University
• Pages: 1-10
• Keywords: Brief; Interdisciplinary; Visual research methods; Participation; Cocreativity
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1652
• Publisher URL: http://research.shu.ac.uk/design4health/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/D4H_Fremantle_et_al.pdf