One of the core aims of this project was to help young patients feel more comfortable with what was going to happen to them in the hospital by providing them with tools to better understand the processes they will undergo.
Existing solutions for hospital gowns lack any element of choice which can in turn contribute to a feeling of helplessness in a child. By Creating a solution that gives the patient some control over how they look, we aim to ease some of the stress they may otherwise have felt.
The story and teddy that come as part of this solution serve to reassure the patient that all will be ok by providng them understanding of what they will experience and agency to decide on certain aspects to help them feel more in control.
With the redesigned gown, we can help empower young patients by protecting some of their dignity through the covering of their backs. We also provide this through the understanding that the solution helps the patient build, assisting them in asking questions and better understanding what's to come.
The brief for this group project was to re-design a childrens hospital gown and consider how our solution might serve to provide the user with more dignity, reassurance, control, etc, over their hospital experience.
Outside of those basic guidelines, we more or less had the freedom to do as we pleased, with intermittent feedback from Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity. Our groups decisions was to develop a means of helping communicate what the child was going to go through while at the hospital so they could better understand what to expect and ideally have their stress reduced.
This module consisted of students from all throughout the Design College. Our group was made up of myself, the only Product Designer and member with any real experience with graphic design / modelling. There was a Fine Art student who focussed more on the art style of the graphic elements, and 2 Textiles students who worked primarily on the gown, teddy and various other accessories.
After some initial getting to know eachother and discussion around the possibilities that the brief presented, we started to pool ideas for how we might improve the childs hospital expereince. Ultimately, we set our sights on producing some kind of physical tool (teddy) that could be used by doctors to show a young patient what was going to happen to them, along with a book that the child could refer back to whenever they pleased, and a partially customisable gown to create a sense of control or agency for the patient in amongst everything else.
One of the first ways we set about researching and developing our design solution was to conduct user research on nursery and early primary school students. We provided them with worksheets and tasked them with turning them into either a superhero, princess or knight. The thinking was that we would find whether a gender neutral approach would be the better choice, as well as hopefully uncovering some consistent themes that we could draw on later in the project.
The reason behind a bear being the animal of choice for the teddy was to hopefully avoid any subconcious gender bias and to keep each element of our solution as universally understandable as possible. If you were asked to imagine a teddy, I’d hazard a guess that you’d picture a bear…
Alongside developing the rest of the project, the tedy is an element that we tested much more rigourously. Seen as the rest of our solution revolved around the character of ‘Bear’, we felt it was crucial to understand how children would interact with them.
For this second round of user testing, we provided a few children with a sample teddy bear and a vague ‘Backstory’, then asked that parents document how their child interacted with it. Surprisingly, we found that most of the children started caring for the bear, sharing stories and walking them through the plots of books they enjoyed. This was the most standout element from this testing, and was a factor we designed into the rest of our product experience.
One of the core problems we set out to address was the exposure and discomfort that comes as a result of traditional hospital gowns being open at the back. While there are practical elements that play a factor in this design, we felt we could produce a solution that preserved some of the patients dignity without inhibiting functionality of the gown. We did so by creating an overlap in the panels at the back of the gown, this still allows access if needed by the doctors but still covers more of the patient in the interim.
The second element to the more dignified back of our gown comes from the closure system. Instead of traditional string that is tied together at the back, we opted for a “hug” closure. This works by having a tab on either side of the back of the gown that wraps around the shoulders of the patient, and using velcro, fastens on their chest. This solution stil provides the neccessary functions of a hospital gown, but does so in a way that can help reassure the patient.
The third element that we set out to address with our solution was to provide the patient with some more control over their hospital experience. This was acheived using a couple of methods, firstly, by offering the child a choice of cape to wear with their gown, there are 3 patterns of cape, giving the patient a choice of how they present themselves. The book part of the solution also serves to layout the hospital process meaning that the patient can move through their various treatments, etc, with a better understanding of what’s going on.
In a hospital setting there are many things that need to be considered in order for your product to be safely used in that environment.
Some such considerations that impacted the development of our design solution were the inability to include any metal fastners that could pose issues during certain scans like MRIs, durability concerns that may be encountered with the likes of buttons coming unstitched, and cost factors that will always play a part in the NHS. While Velcro isn’t the most high tech solution, it delivers on all the practical points it needs to and can stand up to high temperature washing and anything else that might be thrown at it.
In the context of the teddy bear, we opted for stitched eyes to remove any risk of choking and to reduce the risk of damage during post hospital or general cleaning.
One of the things that stood out the most when testing the teddy with children, was their seeming natural instinct to care for and play with the teddy. They dressed up the teddy and told it stories, essentially projecting any potential concerns or fears onto the teddy and helping the teddy through them which in turn helps themsleves.
By developing an outfit and gown for the Teddy, the patient is also provided a task to distract them from the fear or anxiety that can come with waiting for whatever procedures they’re in hospital for to happen.
Before starting to write the book, we conducted some research on existing childrens storybooks. We wanted to get a feel for the language, layout, tone, colour palette, etc. The example that stood out the most and in turn provided us the brunt of our inspiration were the works of Robert Starling. We felt that the art style that he used and the way he framed select visual elements with the text of the story was an effective and enticing solution that we could put our own spin on.
We also made a point of putting a good deal of effort into producing 2 page spreads wherever possible. The hope was that it would help paint a more vivid picture for the reader and enhance the reading experience. We also made efforts to create a sense of ‘flow‘ through the pages by typing along paths and making visual elements ‘travel’ from one page to the next.
At it’s core, the rationale behind the art style we opted for is that we liked it. Looking out from that though, you can argue that the soft lines that make up the characters and environments make the story feel more light hearted, without necessarily making it needlessly childish. The hope was that the story could help patients from as wide a demographic as possible, without creating room for additional anxieties around apearance and how the patient might be perceived or judged by others. These same considerations featured in our thinking for colour palette as well.
As previously mentioned, we felt it was important to make this design solution as widely helpful as possible meaning that the same considerations would be needed for the language and wording of the story as well. We needed to find the balance between understandability, without going so far that the patient feels as though they’re being talked down to or patronised by the story.
The outline of the story itself is based on a more typical hospital visit, meaning that in theory, any young patient should be able to relate. It hits on various key points like the arrival to hospital, donning of the gown, doctors explaining what’s going to happen, going under anaesthetic and waking up again. All of these different points factored into a more lighthearted, playful story about the main character, “Bear” (the same bear that comes as a ateddy with the book, cape and gown), and some of their friends.
Another angle we made sure to address when workshopping the language of the story was that the characters remain gender neutral. The primary reason for this was to make it as easy as possible for a patient of any gender to be able to make the story relate to them and the people they encounter in the hopsital.
The biggest contributing factor to the form of the packaging for our design solution was it’s space efficiency when it comes to storage. Storage space is something of a shortage for the clients of this brief so it was important that we produce something that doesn’t take up excessive space. As is typically the case, cost was another big factor in all of this project, meaning we needed to explore ways of delivering a better user experience for the patients, without making our solution unaffordable for a hospital within the NHS.
For these reasons, we opted for card that could be flat packed when empty or being recycled, produced at a low cost, and could easily be printed on to further improve the patients experience with more visual elements.
The unboxing experience also factored into the form, ensuring that the box be easy to open for young or less able patients further providng that sense of the control that we were striving for.