Conference article

As the view of patients as passive receivers of care is changing towards more active participants in the healthcare process; hospitals are gearing up to provide more patient-centric services. At the same time; they are under increasing pressure to do more with stretched resources and demographic changes. To this end; service design has been utilized in many institutions to provide insights gathered from stakeholders and to design services to that focus on the patient. However; hospitals as a unique design context provide specific constraints for the design process. This paper presents a method of enquiry that was developed during an experimental service design project in which services were developed for sarcoma-type cancer patients. The method borrows visualizations; tangible props and actions from the world of games to assist the patients in the interviews to remember; understand and communicate their patient experiences. The patient journey was visualized in the form of a board game and physical props used by the patients to indicate significant people and events during their care. The game board acted as a design medium; both presenting information for the participants and engaging them to communicate personal and sensitive experiences. It was observed that in addition to the patients; the hospital staff was drawn to the game board as a way of representing information about the patient journey in an easily accessible way. The feasibility of the method was evaluated in the action and fine-tuned during the process. This paper describes the context of the case; the method developed and discusses the implications of this method for design research in services.

Design research; patient experience; design games; customer journey