Rehabilitation center/Interactive smart patient room

Overview

The proposal consists of two parts with two different purposes and functions. The first is to plan the main health headquarters of the General Accident Insurance Company (AUVA), to link the administrative offices with the main general accident hospital and the other proposed section, which is the new trauma and rehabilitation center.

The main headquarter contains administrative offices with an area of 15,000 square meters, with the possibility of merging with the administrative part of the rehabilitation center. My task is to develop a proposal for the city to obtain approval to attach the selected area to the site of the rehabilitation center as a headquarter due to the necessity of using land in the area and the space program for the development of a major area health sector at the site. The concept consists of creating green roofs, terraces, and shaded areas with maximum land use through the implementation of the site’s space program and zoning functions.

The second proposal is to plan the trauma and rehabilitation center of the General Accident Insurance Company (AUVA), to connect the general accident hospital located in front of the site through a bridge and the first proposed headquarters. AUVA’s planned rehabilitation center covers an area of 36,000 square meters, with the possibility of integrating the administrative part with the headquarters.

My mission is to make a schematic design in a very short time and demonstrate by visualizing the main areas which are critical to the concept of the new rehabilitation center. The study of the nature of the rooms and the different conditions of the patients applies to directing the patient rooms and treatment rooms towards specific directions on the site, as well as providing private, public, and semi-private areas and sports areas used in the treatment. The concept of a rehabilitation center focuses on creating a residential architecture concept that addresses patients who spend more time as is the case in regular hospitals and provides all rooms with balconies and green curtains. The next step of this project besides creating floor plans, drawings, etc. is to develop a smart room prototype with the highest technology for patient rooms that can be duplicated for different departments according to the space program developed by the hospital and the external consultants.

In this Part, we started looking at smart solutions for an inclusive range of users including the patients and also the users, doctors, visitors, cleaning staff...etc

By doing research and working directly with doctors and consultants from different parts of the world and external companies, there were a lot of indicators and measures to put in mind and empathy along the way with all the users to achieve a concept of staying in the room for the longer term with comfort and home feelings as same as high technology and medical equipment installation in every single room.

The room has smart hidden objects and furniture with the ability to open the door between two different rooms to have one big double bedroom for socializing with other patients and huge long-sided balconies with natural light and plantation.

Individually I took several online courses for a better understanding of the UX/UI strategies and design methodologies, especially about human-centered design to design as inclusive and useful as possible.

Takeaways 📣

I learned a lot about empathy during this project, I participated in surveys, and interviews with direct users and patients with different kinds of disabilities. I learned that there is a different word for what we were designing for the patients more than architecture design and interior design, it's the experience and the interactions with every sense around us.

My role as a designer for such a big project opened my eyes to the world of mixing technology for the best in physical design and to the value of research even though the company was not investing in the research part, I tried my best to investigate as much as I can about the different needs and behaviors of all kinds of users including putting myself in their shoe for better empathizing and real testing.