Looking for Eyes

Impact

Patient Quotes:
“Signage is not good enough for vision impaired.”
“I must have asked 10 people how to get there.”
“The signage was confusing especially when comparing it to the letter.”

The series of high impact, cost effective solutions will reduce stress and frustration for the 70000+ patients who attend annually for outpatient and day surgery appointments. It will also reduce the need for patients to ask directions and help ensure they arrive at the correct local and on time. 

• In a survey of 68 patients who attended for the first time 84.8% of participants had to ask for directions to find their way
• 55% rated their way-finding journey ‘neutral to very difficult’
• 51% of patients don’t know what Ophthalmology means. Hospitals routinely use these Latin-origin terms for services – e.g. Phlebotomy (bloods) or Radiology (X-ray)
• Studies have shown that if visitors do not have direction – or reassurance of their direction – every 30 feet while travelling through a facility, they will likely stop and ask an employee for directions. 

Patient Quotes:
“I was told to take the lift and ended up in a car-park.”
“I read the letter and was expecting a lift on my left but there wasn’t one.”
“I had to go back to the very start.”
“My son had to Google what Ophthalmology means.”

Challenge

Navigating any large unfamiliar building can be stressful and for people attending a hospital, this is exacerbated by their already heightened state of anxiety. Despite this, hospitals often have poor navigation systems and ‘getting lost’ is a common source of complaint in healthcare facilities internationally. 

Each year 70000+ patients attend the Mater Ophthalmology (Eye) Department for outpatient and day surgery appointments. The department has expanded significantly over time and is split over three different locations. Patients rely on instructions in their appointment letters and hospital signage to figure out where they should be. Patients frequently end up in the wrong place or they rely on asking staff (often multiple times) to help them find their way.

Process

This challenge was originally brought to the Mater-NCAD Design Week in 2018. This is a five day design sprint on the hospital campus where students carry out rapid cycles of user research, ideation, prototyping and testing. The four students interviewed staff and patients and engaged in ‘bodystorming’ where they tried to find their way to various locations while wearing empathy glasses that mimic various eye conditions.

The student team found that signage and way-finding instructions in patient letters and on the website were cluttered and difficult to follow. They also noted that names of departments were inconsistent across the various touchpoints. All of this was contributing to poor patient way-finding experience.

The project was picked up again in 2022, when our design team at Mater Transformation, with continued support from NCAD resumed the research, unlocking new insights for consideration. The final implementable design is now near ready and will be rolled out in 2023.

Output

We are working on the final implementable way-finding design system fro Mater Ophthalmology, which includes new design principles, new signage that works with the current signage at the hospital, updated patient letters and website with up-to-date and accessible way-finding information while also exploring other channels of communication / technologies such as Text message. NaviLens, Indoor Google Maps.