ESMAD - Departamento de Design
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Browsing ESMAD - Departamento de Design by Author "Rodrigues, Rita"
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- Exploring the users’ experience in healthcare servicesPublication . Rodrigues, Rita; Coelho, Rita; Tavares, João Manuel R. S.The challenge in Healthcare services concerns the development of an agreeable experience to the users without affecting the functionality of the service. The traditional approach of the facilities design is focused on providing the best care with the most functional service possible. Based on this paradigm, most of the times the users and their experiences and emotions are not considered when a service is designed. However, concerns with the users’ experience in services are growing, and mainly in Portugal we are starting to observe that the Institutions intend to improve and ameliorate their facilities in order to meet the users’ needs. The project described in this article was developed in one of the biggest Healthcare Institutions in the north of Portugal: Hospital de São João at Porto city. In this project, the main intention of the research was to understand which elements of the physical setting of the Institution had the most impact on the users’ experience and perceptions of the service under study. The methodologies applied to gather the data were questionnaires (applied to the patients of the institution), unstructured interviews (conducted with healthcare professionals) and direct observations performed in situ. The results revealed that the most problematic elements identified were the poor designed signage system that resulted in wayfinding difficulties for the users.
- Healthcare signage design: a review on recommendations for effective signing systemsPublication . Rodrigues, Rita; Coelho, Rita; Tavares, João Manuel R. S.This article provides a set of recommendations, selected from the systematic literature review carried out, regarding signage systems for healthcare institutions that can be used for designing or redesigning more competent signage systems. The signage systems in healthcare settings are usually poorly designed due to the expansion of the original facilities, a lack of awareness of existing guidelines by the developers, and a lack of agreement between the existing recommendations. There are several guidelines and recommendations available in the literature; however, each work was developed for specific cultural contexts, so there is a lack of uniformity among them. Hence, there is a need to uniformize the guidelines for signage design in healthcare, in order to provide supportive information for developers to build and implement effective and efficient signage systems. This study examined the available literature on the subject and established a set of guidelines organized in categories to help the design process. A literature review was conducted, and 34 selected publications were analyzed from which recommendations were created. A best practices manual was also studied and used as the analytical framework to establish the design categories of the developed recommendations. This review resulted in guidelines divided into nine design categories that should be considered in the design and implementation process of signage systems in healthcare facilities.
- Users’ perceptions of signage systems at three portuguese hospitalsPublication . Rodrigues, Rita; Coelho, Rita; Tavares, João Manuel R. S.This article is a report on the quantitative data collected from patients, family members, and visitors using the outpatient areas of three hospitals in Portugal. It details the users’ views regarding the existing signage and presents suggestions to improve the design and implementation of the signage systems. A questionnaire was used with 1,287 respondents. The results showed that almost all users had a positive opinion regarding the current signage. However, some of the users’ answers and observed behaviors indicated that the majority tended to ignore the signs and preferred to ask staff for help. Additionally, when asked for suggestions, many of the respondents were able to point out existing problems that affected their wayfinding. Although the signage was generally evaluated as good, many of the users perceived a variety of problems and, as already mentioned, asked the staff for directions, which results in lost time and hidden costs for the institutions.